 Oh good morning everyone. It is March 16th and this is the Senate Health and Welfare Committee. Thank you all for being available this morning to talk about S-265, the child advocate bill. We're pleased that you're here and we're we'll look through and listen to testimony on S-265 and then we'll also spend some time on age 655 which will be coming to us hopefully next week. So thank you and this morning we've got Mike Fisher here for the child from the health care advocates office and Mike why don't you begin your testimony and then we'll move on to our the health care advocate of the child advocate in Good morning. Good morning. I am Mike Fisher, the chief health care advocate. If you're around me, Madam Chair, I want to speak for just a minute as Mike Fisher, citizen, former, early childhood home visitors to the Madison County Cairnshaw Center. I've worked for 27 years doing early childhood home visiting up until about over four years ago. So I, in that personal role, I know the child protection system from all sides. I have played multiple different roles on it as a social worker at DCM, sorry, SRS at the time. Yes. And so from that perspective, I want to give a global, I support the goals of this film. It makes sense to have an advocate's office that is scale wash yard on our system. And I also want to recognize it's a really tough role. There are tough, tough decisions that have to get made where people are upset with those decisions and decisions have to get made. So I just want to honor and recognize that there's nothing easy about this. I know it very personally. Sorry, sorry, I won't. So, let me put on my list of questions for citizen Mike Fisher. I will switch to health care advocate Mike Fisher. So, where the advocate's office lives matters. I think as Mike, it's the discussion I want to have with you today. I didn't come with any presentation. I really wanted to sort of give you the example of my office as as one example, and there are pros and cons to this decision. This is sort of one access independence with everything that that provides for it. And, and on the other side, access and engagement. And so, for, you know, for me, I am, I work for my legal aid. I am, I went through a contract with my position to find fully state statute and do these and everything. And there's a contract that goes up for our fee every three years with extensions, no annual extension so it's annual contract. We just went through the one this past summer, where legal aid is the contract to do the office of the health care advocate. And that provides us a certain level of provides a lot of independence, but I'm not going to pretend for a minute that it's full independence. All of my funding comes through the state budget and through the government's recommend. And so, while the contract and the process that I have with the agency requests of or requires of me to be in touch with them on a regular basis of the cases that we're seeing, and about the policy proposals where I never have to ask permission. I didn't call anyone before coming here today and say hey, that's not going to testify about this. I have my office has agents. And I think that's important. If you're looking for a wash dog like advocates office that's going to have the ability to say, heads up, we've got problems with those systems. So, you know, another example of that. And it's just a little self serving to mention but I'll mention it. My office has been level funded for six years. I have a funding request for an increase in our budget, working its way through the system I hope that we're going to get it. I won't have to come back here and ask you for it on the Senate side. But if I was a part of state government. I would not have a funding request for an increase in one couldn't. So that's just another example of the positive side of the independence. We have, you know, I think the world of healthcare advocacy is different than the world of child advocacy. So I sort of recognize that we have contracts with, you know, agreements with Diva and carriers to be able to share information about individual clients with their permission. And that all works fine. I would, I would suggest that the world of when there is a child protection effort underway on whatever level it is. There is this who gives permission on what level. It's just much more complicated. So, so, so I think, and we also recognize the downside where I said, I don't have access to the same information that people in the state government. You know, I can ask for it is off the portion poll. I feel good about the relationships I have with our partners and state government. But I can report you over the years, it hasn't been trouble free. So that's the downside of independence model. On the other side, I think you have witnesses, you know, I know you have Susana Davis coming later on the day she she's a newer office. But she's the example of being inside the state government. But I really wanted to just sort of put those that dynamic at your feet, as you consider where's the right place for this to be. I've been in this business for a while. I know the efforts to how to find the best of both worlds, both worlds, put it inside state government with all kinds of assurances of independence. And while those efforts for independence inside the state government may have some impact. I guess I would suggest that they won't have the kind of won't create kind of independence when you have someone outside of state government. Thank you. So I think the bill has it in the agency of the administration. So are you suggesting more of a model like the healthcare advocate and it's so what organization where I actually don't want to be suggested if you put in one place or another. I want to be saying, if your value in the creation of this office is to have a fiercely independent watch on the system. Yeah, I believe you get less of that inside. If you're looking for somebody who's inside the system has more access to case files and the data and working from within to the system. I shouldn't analyze it. I think he had, you know, the taxpayer advocate in here they worked for tax. And I think that they would tell stories about them pushing the system as well. It's just a different style. I don't know if it's exactly but I, I, when somebody calls are some legislators often asked me how your officer should I call the commissioner. I just have access to commissioners to call commissioners. But you get a little bit of a different response from a commission from my own commission is going to say, did my staff follow this. I didn't follow the rules. Whereas my office is going to say, what's the client want. How do we help the client get. So, it might be that the client calls and says, hey, diva measured my income wrong. I should be eligible. Okay, I don't know what you did correctly. But diva didn't send you an appropriate notes. So they can't take the action. Just sort of a difference in style. We're, we're, we're, we are. I don't know if that is exactly what you asked. I don't mean suggest that it should be outside or should be inside. I suggest that that decision should be based on the kind of action. Yeah, so we, no one gave us a list of the advocates across the country. I mean, it is the one that does it through contract and all the others are either administrative or judicial or somewhere embedded. Okay. But any other questions. Yeah, go ahead. I know Mike said you didn't want to suggest any place but what are likely places like legal aid. I don't know where else besides the outside. I should be prepared to answer the question about legal aid and I'm not. I don't know whether legal aid would be interested in the case that we're in and whether we would be with the legal it would be interesting that I would. I would have to say the legal aid personally, a reminder. This is a very complicated step. It's not a simple. You know, and I'll just. It's all the easier social worker. You know, my clients. My clients as a family. And, and the children and it's been nine times out of 10, it's best for everyone to stay together. I have to shift my sense of who my client was over to the child. And what I felt was best for the child. That's a social worker to do that in a different way than I'm aware. We're sure. Okay, thank you. Any other questions. We're good. Thank you. You know, talk again, but this is how very helpful. We did have some questions that you have begun to respond to. Thank you. Yes. Thank you. All right. Do not have one in my drawer. Thank you. Okay. Any other technological difficulties. Oh, my God. All right. All right. So. She is the healthcare advocate. Thank you. Child advocate. This is going to be difficult. I know that. So Laura, thank you for being here with us. We greatly appreciate it. with your testimony and I know that you have very late in the evening last night so we'll follow along and we'll listen to your comments we so we have a lot of questions so we're ready to soak it off sure thank you thank you so much it's a great opportunity to be here and can you hear me okay yes very well so so thanks chair Lyons and vice chair Westman for the record my name's Moira O'Neill I'm the child advocate for the state of New Hampshire and we really do appreciate the opportunity to speak in support of House Bill 265 and act relating to the office of the child youth and family advocate which I'll refer to as the office if you don't mind I'm really grateful that Vermont has undertaken this endeavor we in New Hampshire have supported it from its inception because it really is in the interest of Vermont's children but it would also complete a regional network of support and oversight of children's services the New England state borders I don't know if you're aware are very fluid for many children we often have lamented the absence of a peer to contact when we had questions about the care of New Hampshire children who are placed in Vermont or when we have encountered Vermont's children in New Hampshire so today I really want to reiterate that support and to give you a little context of my expertise about these kinds of offices I was in addition to this role I was an assistant child advocate for the state of Connecticut for 11 years I complimented that work with doctoral study and completed a dissertation that was a descriptive exploratory study of state children's ombudsman and child advocates across the United States and now I'm the first child advocate here in New Hampshire and built this office from inception so this is really an area of state government that I'm pretty well informed and very enthusiastic and I submit it as you know I was up late last night because this is such an important issue funny that you noticed that but I so I submitted comments and I just want to go off script a little bit this morning because I don't think I really did service to the why of this legislation we like to think that we should be confident in the state taking care of and protecting children adequately and for the most part I think people get up every morning and do just that but I think the deepest value of an office of child youth and family advocate is the broad access to information that quite frankly no one else has so child protection healthcare workers residential providers even parents rarely have the whole story and that's usually what causes disruption and child's path so the advocate is in a unique position to bring all parties together and inform them of the child's whole narrative and interpret for parents what's happening so in that way people can make better decisions on how to serve the child and the family likewise with systems the advocate brings a full big picture view to the table and can build alliances that transform systems and I found over the years in observing these offices that it's really not a policing endeavor I know we like to refer to us as watchdogs but it's but it's rather more of a partnership that benefits from this independent lens so we're free of political pressures we're focused only on the best interest and best practice and so I really applaud Vermont for recognizing how important that is so to help you make your decision today I can speak to the experience of opening an independent office and to the adjustments that we made statutorily in the first years I can also speak to necessary infrastructure and costs but yesterday I listened to some of your deliberations on this bill and we'll start with a few comments in response to the questions that I heard and then I'll welcome any additional questions that you have today so first I heard you asked someone how can one person do all the work that's implied within the office's mandate and it's true that these offices can be overwhelmed with activity it's a matter of establishing a manageable system to receive complaints and incident reports and to establish priorities that are driven by the trends that emerge from those that data input so the best approach is to hire knowledgeable capable staff and invest in a really good case management system that has robust reporting capacity so in fact those are the two significant expenses of these offices staff and a case management system we found in New Hampshire during the first four years that we operated largely in a reactive mode you know this office was established out of crises and that was the genesis of of our being and so there were a lot of lingering concerns that preceded us and then this year we undertook a strategic planning process with a broad assessment of both our performance and also stakeholder identified needs in the community and therefore demands on us and I think we've developed a structure and a strategic plan that's informed by those expectations and now we know a little bit more about what the office is and that's going to help lessen the chaos and focus on really priority issues it's always going to be a struggle to keep up with that another question that I heard yesterday was about infrastructure of the office and you just spoke with the health care advocate about that and he knows the Vermont system a little better than I do so I would defer to him largely but I will say about child advocates around Budsman that the model has been tried in only two states to date Colorado and Maine as you've just mentioned Colorado reverted into a government setting for among other things credibility and sustainability they are now attached to the judiciary on a memorandum of understanding just for administrative support while they maintain independence Maine continues in the nonprofit model and they are a standalone entity they had previously been part of a child advocacy nonprofit who were unable to sustain them so they had to establish themselves as a nonprofit which means that they carry all the overhead and the other existing costs that can be sort of devastating to a really small agency my observation is that not having a place around the capital the office in Maine lacks the stature and full perceived authority of a government agency the classical office is designed to have full independence is attached to the legislature's administrative services many of us are in the executive branch attached to a department of administrative services which I assume is the equivalent to your agency administration and that's just for support like human resources budget management and other operational tasks I will say there are challenges in independence there are challenges around the budget that you just heard there are also challenges around the child advocate in terms of if it's a matter of reappointments or salary and those things you still don't have full independence so those are things to think about but they are very functional I would say the majority of the new offices that are being established across the country are in are attached for administrative purposes to the agency administration and then I heard discussion about the advocate's access to children when they're in residential programs but not in the custody of state which was an interesting question so house bill 265 gives the advocate the authority to speak with children and access information generally when the state is paying for a service and we often say that where state dollars are involved we have authority because we oversee the state's investment in children so if parents or guardians are making decisions about children and placing them in residential programs then your presumption is that they are providing their own oversight of the child's care so when a state places a child not only is the state financially responsible it also may be acting as the child's parent and therefore must be responsible to oversee the child's care I think that's the major difference there there are some situations where we have concerns about a facility that's accommodating children who are placed privately in fact recently we received concerns about abusive practices and what was an outdoor adventure camp that during a pandemic evolved into a school so while we didn't really have direct authority to enter and access children and their records we were able to seek out other avenues of state responsibility through licensing through public health through fire and safety and school certification so in that way we're able to at least prompt attention to the situation even though we didn't it wasn't really in our jurisdiction and that's sort of one of the benefits is that people recognize the child advocate is at least someone to go to to get information about how to navigate systems and then you asked how the advocate would impact the new interstate compact being considered and the new interstate compact on the placement of children establishes a consistent process among states for the movement of children across borders which I just said can be very fluid especially here in new england in the context of the advocates duties the icpc represents one more aspect of state involvement in a child's life that would benefit from an independent lens of oversight so remember that the icpc is a minimum standard the advocate will have the authority to examine assessments under icpc to look at home studies and to look at all the decisions that are made in placing a child at a distance from their home and offer a layer of assurance that decisions are made in the child's interests in the case of icpc over residential placements I can tell you that we routinely contact our peers in other states to inquire about conditions of a facility or information about recent incidents there that may not come up in an icpc process where especially if there's concerns after the child is placed and it's been through the icpc assessment when I worked for the Connecticut office of the child advocate we received an inquiry from the Rhode Island child advocate who had recently visited a Rhode Island child placed in a Connecticut facility and that call prompted us to visit and eventually investigate what were deplorable conditions in that particular facility and it was actually closed over a hundred children moved to a better care thanks to the alert you know observations of a child advocate from another state so that give and take an alerting is really very helpful you're in New Hampshire when we see a spate of incidents in a small facility in our state that we know houses children from other states we will alert the child advocates in the sending states to investigate and be sure that their children are tended to and I'm sure you're aware that New Hampshire receives children from Vermont at your at our youth prison the Sonu new youth services center my office holds office hours regularly at that facility we talk to kids who have concerns or questions on a very regular basis to ensure that their needs are met so on at least three occasions we've encountered Vermont children who had concerns about where they were going to go when they turned 18 imminently and didn't know if there was a plan for them even to get back to Vermont so we have had to scramble our our work to figure out you know who in Vermont were responsible for these kids and sort of prompt them to respond to them but without any authority in Vermont we have no way of knowing if young people are getting the supported transition that they need for the best outcomes so if there were a child youth and family advocate we could just call and alert them that this child has aged out of our system and they're on their way home and they really need to be transitioned carefully out of that kind of an institution so those are the major themes of questions that I heard in your discussion yesterday I'll add that I very much appreciate the establishment of the advisory committee in my dissertation study I found that the advocate is a lonely position and that the necessity for independence confidentiality and neutrality of oversight leaves them with few resources to process decision making so New Hampshire has an oversight commission that's supportive but as a public body there's no space for discussing the child advocates concerns or for taking advice on investigative actions so I think the advisory committee will be especially useful as a sounding board in the early days of building the office and establishing its processes was very well thought out they'll also be helpful in observing the needs and demands of the office to determine what adjustments will be necessary in future iterations of your enabling statute it's not uncommon in most states that the role is defined by the needs of the system in New Hampshire we completely rewrote our statute we moved it out of out of out of the chapter that it had been to ensure the independence and we expanded its jurisdiction and so that's something that may be considered in Vermont over time it's always good to get started and then to have a good group of of thinkers trying to figure out where's the best place for for it to be and and and it's it's authorities and mandates so I'm going to stop there and take questions if you have them and and also urge you to support House Bill 265 thanks for this opportunity. Thank you. You did spend a great deal of time answering a lot of the questions that we had yesterday and also giving us a window into the work that you do so we greatly appreciate it. I do have a couple of questions and then I'm sure others will as well. I see hands going up hands going up. So I'll just go through the questions as I wrote them down you were talking about kids and residential facilities and the your that you do not work with any child who isn't under the have a relationship with the state and so do you have any relationship with mandatory reporters and the various institutions across your state and what role might they play and informing you about kids who are not under the state state's jurisdiction. Sure so New Hampshire is universal mandated reporting so all adults are mandated reporters here so that's so so that so there isn't a special category of people that you would want to seek out and and so we encourage anyone who calls with concerns to call in a report of suspected abuse or neglect if they have them. We are also mandated reporters and we will call in reports as well although we do maintain confidentiality of the people that we talked to that's part of our statute is people are protected when they contact us so it is a matter of a third party report. We also do a lot of education around the state about mandated reporting responsibilities and we're part of a very big project that is supported by the Casey family program that is developing a community resource guide for people who are not sure about whether something is abuse or neglect or whether it is what's most commonly reported on is poverty, mental illness, substance use that's impacting children's care. So we're very very active in that role and from our statute that requires us to advise upon assist and take part in improving the system so a lot of education a lot of outreach and a lot of sitting down and rolling up our sleeves and figuring out how to do the system better. Okay so if you received the report from a residential facility where there was a suspected abuse or neglect and the kids were not under the umbrella of the state then you would do what I mean you would do anything to refer to the Department of Health or Public Safety and have it handled that way but are there steps that you could take within the child support system? Yes sure so we um so number one we would encourage the caller to call it in to the care line because they have the you know they have first person information about it. We also have immediate electronic access to our division for children using families uh case management system and database so we would check to see if there had been a report filed if a report is not filed we would file it ourselves. Okay thank you um so then I have two other questions and I'll go right to the communication question it seems like you have a very robust communication system you have a hotline you have telephones you've got education going on and you just talk a little bit about that and how it permeates the state and then how many people you have working for you because it sounds like a herculean job. Sure um so the so the care line that the hotline is is the Child Protective Agency DCYF that is not our hotline um and we refer people to that um we do have uh I'll tell you um uh I'll lay it out for you as it it turned out when the office opened we had a budget of 350 thousand dollars an approval for three positions my position is the child advocate um and a second position that was an attorney's position and a um and another position that was sort of open when I turned into an administrative position to support the office the office has to have someone that can run the office even though you're administratively attached to another organization um you still need someone who's you know ordering paper monitoring the phones and um and just doing the daily sort of making sure that the office is running um and so so you have uh the the advocate and you have a deputy um so here in the office of the child advocate the attorney that we um that we hired it eventually was a similar to a deputy role um and then um we clearly found that we needed more support and we added staff um and we also added to the budget so the budget now I want to say is between 750 to 800 thousand dollars we have um six and a half or we will have six and a half staff in addition to my position in July we get one more in July the biggest expense obviously is staff um what those staff all do we have the child advocate who um does almost everything but also is chiefly um the sort of the liaison to the legislature response to stakeholders who are part of initiatives we belong to any number of committees and commissions who are constantly reporting on things and doing analyses and running the office the associate child advocate who is also the attorney does much of that runs special investigations um writes reports uh manages the staff and also manages the legal obligations of the office and I'll tell you one of the things that has taken up most of our resources in in New Hampshire has been the 91 a we're called the right to know requests although we're exempt from those we do get them frequently um and we have to account for ourselves to to demonstrate that we are exempt um so that so those sorts of things that are totally extraneous to the mission of the office take up some time we have an assistant child advocate who is somewhat of the ombudsman of the office who takes the calls and works with people who are calling in complaints attends meetings and um writes reviews on individual children's uh care needs and we've recently added a legal secretary who enters all the data from our um incident reports we receive a couple thousand incident reports a year and um and that's that's so that we can keep the data analysis going so she's very crucial and our most recent um hire was um a legal aid who's doing background research on individual cases um she does summaries of critical incident reviews or critical incident reports and um and she'll also be supporting some of the bigger investigations that the the child advocate and the deputy or the associate child advocate conduct and then in july we have approval for one one more position which would be another ombudsman position to handle um the complaints coming in so so there are a couple of things happen our mandate requires that we do outreach and education as well and so the more you talk the more you educate the public the more calls you're going to get so you sort of build that um across the country the staff range in numbers from one i think that has recently come to two and uh i want to say that's kansas and west virginia they now have two staff main was one staff for a very long time and is now two and there's there's legislation to give her more um positions right now being considered um massachusetts has 18 staff and it's going to get more um and they have a they massachusetts has a budget of eight million dollars um we're just even hard to have conversations with them sometime um but there are a couple of these offices that actually provide services um so i think in south carolina they actually run the gal program um so they're not all the same um but i would say that you can be functional at around 350 000 for salary um and um and the case management system the case management system can be very expensive um but it's really important that you have the ability to collect this data um looking at trends and complaints looking at trends in incidents i see that you will be reporting that the advocate will be receiving reports of restraint and seclusion and we do a lot of work around there and try to um through the data analysis that we've done we were successful in getting residential programs to be um uh required to institute uh special programs to eliminate the use of restraint and seclusion um and so that data you can see is very very important in terms of in influencing how the system is going to transform um and those that's always the first question that that child advocates and ombudsman ask each other what is your case management system how much does it cost and how um how does it work for you i'll just ask two quick questions and i don't need don't need a long answer because i think others would like to ask a question so it sounds like you work with both adjudicated and not adjudicated kids yes and then uh your the work that you're doing with um i'll just leave it there for now so thank you for coming set her hand up no it was the size of the step oh okay thanks all right yeah this is very helpful just to get into the details uh let me ask this question and i know that others will have questions um how closely do you work with your department of children families or similar organizations within state government and do they provide you the data and information that you need on a regular basis and does that sort of offset the need for your expanding your staff oh thank you for that question um we work very closely so our the first iteration of our mandate by statute was to oversee just child protection and juvenile justice in dcyf division for children youth and families um and so we work very closely with them from the beginning we have an investigative process of critical incidents that uses safety science which engages their staff to review incidents and so it's very empowering and then they own the um they own the subsequent recommendations and make things happen so it's rather groundbreaking um then we expanded it went into effect in 2020 september we have jurisdiction over all children's services so any service that's supported or or provided or arranged by the state so we're still building relationships with other agencies um and and there is always a little bit of a tension because you're perceived as oversight and oversight is never welcome and so it's it's we've done a lot of work in building relationships so people will trust us that we're there to help um i'm sorry i forgot the next piece of your question no that's how we'll do the data for you uh oh yeah so so we have direct access to the child protection and juvenile justice case management system we have direct access to the sununu youth services electronic system we get reports all day about things that are happening in the in the sununu center um we we um we can request data um from anyone and generally get it they're they're fairly um uh cooperative about that the more data you have actually the more help you need in responding and i think when i was talking to you about our staff i neglected to mention that we hired a children services data analyst who has been really a remarkable resource to the office he's a brilliant guy um and is actually probably one of the better analysts in the system dcyf has had trouble hiring and keeping data analysts because they can make so much money elsewhere um and so we were lucky enough to get someone who's just dedicated to the interest of children um but but that's that that generates and supports better and makes more effective and efficient our investigations to have someone who's able to really understand the data go ahead senator hardy and then senator hoker thank you miss oniel for being with us today um uh you have a ton of information two questions um one is do you have speaking of data do you have data about the sort of outcomes and efficacy of your office basically what's changed for kids in new hampshire since your office was established and then my second question is it sounds like there's a little bit of overlap but with a different potential um uh sort of angle between some of the work that you're doing and some of the work that your office has a division of youth and family services or whatever it's called in new hampshire rd so how do you reconcile the overlap you just said you have a data analyst they have a data analyst so those are my two questions sure so that so so the data in um in the child protection agency in the juvenile justice agency um generally the focus there is on preparing reports for the federal government right i mean that's a big piece of that um and also they they have really transformed their use of data um in the past couple years to be able to inform better their their major transformations that they're they're undergoing but they also have a very antiquated system um that uh was supposed to be replaced over five years and that got delayed because of contract issues and that were complicated by the pandemic so they won't have a really good robust system for probably another four years um so we do my data analysts works with them in terms of accessing data um and we've found that we are able to generate some reports for example um they report incident reports to us from all the residential facilities by law but they don't analyze the data they just pass it on to us and so we've been able to make some significant changes in individual children's experiences because by looking at the data we can see where there are trends where you know when well when we did our first report on restraints and seclusion we found that over five years 20 000 incidents had been reported of restraint and seclusion but nobody knew what those 20 000 incidents were so we had the capacity to pick that apart and see like it was one child who was restrained 200 times in a month and so let's look at how we're taking care of that child um and then that can change for the child and also for the facility and then we learn from that and now um we're able to see initiatives across the board um our outcomes and effects of our um our office um are still very much in the anecdotal range you know I can tell you that we came up with a bill and we've supported it and it was passed and so that you know we changed the definition of abuse to to clarify what emotional maltreatment is you know that was a huge undertaking of our work but so that's why we did the work of a strategic plan this year that's about to be released because we knew that we needed to find ways to set goals and measure them so that we can demonstrate what is the effect of the office and hopefully at some point um the next child advocate will have um the ability to do you know sort of an analysis of funding on children and looking at where the investments are improving children's outcomes including the investments in the office of the child advocate okay great so it sounds like before you came to New Hampshire though you had a lot of experience you wrote your phd dissertation on child advocacy so is there national data that shows the efficacy of the offices and sort of says this lives of children have been improved yeah there is not oh and and it's so interesting because this is probably the fastest growing segment in state government across the country is establishing these offices um they're generally I would say um established out of emotion to a crisis vermont has been more methodical about it and thinking about it that's rather rare um and it's a good thing because there is some um there's there's some criticism of establishing offices in response to a crisis when you know every day there's things happening that could benefit from this sort of role and why wait until a child dies in order to set up this kind of a system thank you thank you thank you for the questions thank you doctor you certainly have confirmed that this is a long work and I'm just curious to know when your office was established thank you for the question so so we opened doors in on january 30th 2018 so we're just we've just done completed four years of existence and I guess how long did it take before you were able to get more funding from the initial I want to say that we we received funding for more staff so New Hampshire has a two-year budget and we received funding we came in in the middle of a budget so we had we had funding for two staff in the next biennium budget and I will say the legislature is very supportive of this office and really has come to count on us to bring you know excellent credible information to inform their legislative efforts and so they they've been supportive financially of the office in return because they I don't know how they measure it but they do see a benefit when we come into hearings and we give information it's always very carefully researched and we're able to use the lived experience of kids to inform it and that's made it a lot easier to make decisions about about allocations and changes in policy for kids any other questions this has been very helpful we've got now we got a broader picture of what the office is all about and so we appreciate you're taking time to to help us understand that thank you so much how long has main's office been in existence so yeah main's office actually it it existed decades ago maybe I want to say maybe even 50 years ago and then it disappeared if there was some sort of there's some history there that's an interesting story but then there was another you know tragedy and it came back online I want to say I'm terrible with numbers but I want to say that they the ombudsman's been around for probably maybe 25 years or so but it's a very it's always been a very quiet office it's only in the past two years that that office has become known by the public because of tragedies and people you know sort of looking at elevating that office but yeah I'm gonna guess and I can I can clarify that and send you that information but I'm it's it's something that was on the books many years ago and then it went away that and when it was originally in the books it was in the it was in the state government and when it came back it was in the non-profit thank you great thank you so much for the opportunity I wish you well and if you have other questions please don't hesitate to contact me we will thank you and we won't make you say it please I hope okay thank you we should probably keep moving along with that some very good testimony up front so I'm going to go to deputy commissioner Brad to you who is here as well as Jennifer Micah are you two testifying together or separately how are we doing this it looks like Jennifer you're ready to go we'll be testifying together but I like it when you're when you're together yes helps us okay so welcome folks and we'll just turn it over to you and listen to your testimony great well good morning Chairman Lyons and members of the committee for the record my name is Erica Radke and I'm deputy commissioner for the family services division of DCF and as you know I have here Jennifer Micah DCF's general counsel and we'd like to talk today about our perspective regarding the office of the child and family advocate and with that I'll just turn it over Jennifer to get us started thank you members of the committee my name is Jennifer Micah general counsel for DCF and in listening to the testimony last year there was quite a lot of testimony some of some people you've already had in today and earlier yesterday I believe about what the goals of the bill are and I think identifying the issues that you want to the the office to look at is going to be really critical Michael Fisher didn't testify this year but last year he did talk about the issue of mission creep and the need to maintain to know exactly what it is that you want the office to accomplish especially with two positions and to in order for you to think about that I wanted to help I wanted to share with you some of what DCF does on an annual basis and over time in terms of the reporting that we do and some of the committees that we have as you probably know the legislature commissioned a report by UVM that was about 150 page report that came out in October and I believe there's one more there might be one more update to that report and that was a you know hundreds of thousands of dollar report and I and I hope that you've looked at that and we're we're using that to improve our systems in addition to that report we have the public consulting group report that we commissioned ourselves on the issue of residential treatment and we're also using that to inform the work that we're trying to do and to improve our residential systems and to move more children into the communities in addition to those reports for for our work we are we have the juvenile justice stakeholders group which works with people in the in the in the juvenile justice system to improve our communication and work with youth we have the Children's Justice Act Task Force we have the Marant Children's Vermont Citizens Advisory Board we are we have recently put in our family's first prevention plan we have the federal review process which is it's a seven year cycle but we what we do updates every year and we every year we do twice a year we do reviews of 65 randomly chosen cases um in addition we have the National Partnership for Child Safety Vermont was one of the first 13 members of that there are now about 26 members and we use them for collaboration on improving child safety and outcomes we have the Chins Reform work group which we're working for with the judiciary to improve our our outcomes and systems work with our children so we are doing an awful lot and that is on top of course of all the the daily work that we do working with families and children um against that backdrop I wanted to go through the bill with you and discuss some of the issues that we have and some of some recommendations we have around that bill as I mentioned I think the scope of this bill is very broad and I think it would be helpful to focus on certain areas if you if you decide to pass this bill I think that one of the one of the issues I think that we would like to do is would be to have more case centered work rather than systems work we think that we are doing a lot of systems work right now and I I've noticed that in the testimony of the child advocate from New Hampshire that they recently added somebody to do that casework and I and I would encourage you to put that front and center to help families navigate the system so let me let me go to the bill itself 302 30203 a states the qualifications of the advocate um the current legislation states can I just ask would will you be setting us this testimony and writing I'd be happy to do that certainly yeah I think that would be helpful it keeps us from having to write everything down we can pay attention to what you're saying listen okay good 30203 a states the qualifications of the advocate um and the current legislation states that the person must be quote qualified by reason of education expertise and experience and who may have a professional degree in law social work public health or a related field uh just so you know that language is slightly different from New Hampshire's legislation on which most of this bill is based in New Hampshire's legislation it states that it shall have a person shall have a professional degree um and I think that that language without a shell is is to some extent meaningless because they may or may not have a degree it doesn't serve to inform the person reading it as to what the legislature really wants um and I and I would encourage you to have people with particular expertise uh who understand systems and understand working with families and this ties into the issue of the deputy advocate the deputy advocate has no qualifications required under this particular legislation and we think that's problematic because the deputy advocate should this advocate leave the position will be stepping into that role and as the New Hampshire advocate noted the um they sometimes you could have you could have an uh an administrative person hired who would then be automatically put into the advocate role which might not be an appropriate thing to do um so the moving on to section 3203b1 it outlines the process for appointing the advocate the legislation requires the oversight commission to provide names to the governor and the governor is required to pick one of those names but the legislation does not state how many names are required to be sent to the governor and you could potentially have simply one name which I think undermines the independence of the governor to make that choice and also doesn't require enough of the oversight to commission to really search for highly qualified candidates to send to the governor um substantively 3205 is problematic for the department this this is I understand why this is an essential section this is about providing reports of critical incidents and seclusions and restraints to the office of child advocate um the problem is we don't have an adequate it system as we've been we've been in any number of committees over any number of years discussing this issue um with you and at present we do not have a manner in which we can adequately ensure that these records will get to the child advocate currently our seclusion and restraint excuse me our seclusion and restraint reports come to our licensing division um and they come directly from the organizations that send them and we do not have a central database for those records and we do not have an IT system that can do that we are literally working on a DOS based system in many cases and the green the blinking green light is still present in our world and it is presents huge problems with data I know that both this year and last year the New Hampshire child advocate discussed the issue of the need for data and in fact last year I'm not sure if it was the advocate who testified or the deputy advocate but they talked about one of the things that if they could do anything better it would be at data we are hamstrung by the lack of data systems we can you know if you if you require that we provide it we will do our best but we cannot provide it in a way that will be be able to aggregate the information the other thing is around seclusion and restraints we would encourage you to define seclusion and restraint and I would recommend that you use the language that we have in our residential treatment program licensing regulations they're fairly they're fairly broad but it it it clarifies some of the concerns that um we were some of our adolescent services unit individuals had around you know sometimes a restraint can be something like walking somebody down a hallway in a residential program and not permitting them to you know move elsewhere but it is not necessarily laying hands or something like that so we wanted to make sure that that would be clarified moving on to section 3208 on confidentiality so I do think that obviously record confidential records should remain confidential as they are within the department but I don't think you want to have an exemption from the public records act for the work of the public of the child advocate I think like any other entity in state government you want their files to be open for public inspection to the extent they can be in the same way that every other entity in state government is required to do um it allowed it would allow in in fact it allows some of the systems work to be made public and that you know if there are if there are for for instance disagreements between the the state the executive branch and the office of child advocate you know it allows for sharing of information that might not otherwise be available um 3208 b is a somewhat technical issue we have it provides that the advocate can provide documents to entities listed in 4921 e1 4921 is sort of our um bible for confidentiality of a child abuse and neglect records and it is very very specific in 4921 e1 provides that records shall be provided to the court to parties and attorneys in a juvenile proceeding health and mental health care providers educators working with the family foster families and mandated reporters it doesn't include the department which makes sense because that particular reference is directing the department to provide or not to provide records but I think that if the child advocate has records regarding a family that we don't have that we should they should be allowed to provide that that information to us um it would be an irony I think if you had a child advocate that could not provide information to the department where that information would be helpful for the department and serving that child um 3208 c another um slightly technical issue it provides that the advocate can publicly disclose information except about a youth or if there is pending law enforcement investigation of prosecution I would recommend that this also include a prohibition on releasing names of other family members and kin who are involved with that youth I don't I think I'm guessing that was an oversight um but I think you want families to maintain their confidentiality um so finally have to going through those details I wanted to talk generally about some of the general concerns we have about this um one at present we get an awful lot of records requests um just this year for instance we've had 14 public records records requests just for family services division we've had 23 in the whole department and we also have 28 what we will call private records requests and those are record requests from individuals who have been um in our system in one way or the other or other could be a youth who wants to access their records from when they could be an adult who wanted to access the records from when they were a youth could be a parent looking for information these are a huge burden for us and we are very concerned that this office will in fact create additional work for us that around records and providing records to people and going through databases and things like that that are going to be really really disruptive so I would ask that you consider that and think about ways that we can um alleviate some of that either through additional staff which I'm not formally asking for here I haven't certainly haven't gotten permission for that or you know but it is an issue for us we really struggle with it on a daily basis and so um to the extent that it's not not addressed in the bill I would ask that you consider that and we will certainly talk some more about ways that we can address that or things that we could put in the bill to um to have us think about that um it's one of some of the things that testified that came out last year um from a doctor working in child abuse and neglect was the real importance of this not being an adversarial role and uh I appreciate that you brought in the advocate from New Hampshire I think it might also be helpful if they were willing to have state government officials from New Hampshire or the other states to talk about their involvement with the Office of Child Advocate to see what they think how the office does and what redundancies there might be and how whether it is in fact non-adversarial. Michael Fisher spoke about where to place the office um I have worked in state government for over 20 years and as as a state employee um attorney assistant attorney general and now general counsel and I have worked regularly with Vermont legal aid um and I really highly appreciate Vermont legal aid I think that putting us in a position such as an ombudsman makes more sense than having an independent office it allows them to work with colleagues it allows them the support of other attorneys in the office to bat ideas around which I always find really really helpful as I'm sure you all do um and to put this as sort of a separate two-person office in a system that is really highly contentious and and can be very confusing I think um I just think it would be better for the individuals um who are in the office to have that kind of support uh and and I also think that Michael um downplayed a little bit the expertise that comes from the Vermont legal aid offices you know they know systems they know the government they know the people in it and I think that they would be a really great place to put an ombudsman if you decided to a child advocate or ombudsman however you wanted to frame the the title um so I think that that let me double check my notes if I could um oh I also think one of the things that came up last year that uh wasn't raised by the New Hampshire child advocate this year is that if I'm remembering correctly they had a fair amount of um assistance from a private or a nonprofit organization to get their um IT database and um going and we don't have that so to the extent that we're looking at putting money um into a new database system for the child advocate that I think you're going to need more money for that so I think that concludes my testimony if anybody has any questions I'm happy to field them or Erica oh I remember one thing actually oh sorry go ahead yeah one of the things I wanted was for Erica to to to discuss the complaint process because I know that um one of the issues with the child advocate is having them review complaints coming from youth or family and Erica has some background on how we do that sure I'd love to um we do have what we call the CSTS that's the customer service tracking system where when we do get a complaint let's say a complaint has been emailed to me then I will send it to our director of operations who then either investigated herself or send it to one of her operations managers to to talk to generally we will reach out to our customer to see what's going on and um I remember when Michael was testifying he felt that when um complaints come in the first question is well what did the staff what's going on with our staff what happened there and that the their first question would be how can we help and I'd sort of like to turn that around to when we do get customer complaints our first question is how can we help what's going on and then we look to see how our procedures and policies if they've been have been met and how that will work to make sure that the situation has been alleviated so it's really a nice collaborative effort with the consumer to try to work out the issue and our complaints are logged in the computer system and tracked just to make sure if there are particular workers that may be having issues or particular issues that are coming up so that we can really address them on a large-scale process as opposed to them just being one-off situations because it is really important to us to make sure that our system as a whole is functioning. Thank you Madam Chair. Thank you Jennifer and Erica um it sounds like the IT system and situation is super problematic and challenging for all of you and someone actually stopped me in the hall yesterday to ask me about it um so uh the word is out let's just say um it sounds like in New Hampshire they have direct the Advocates Office has direct access to the IT system so that they don't have to actually make a request they just have direct access so that to get to your point Jennifer that it would create more requests for you but if you don't have a good enough IT system there's nothing to access it sounds like it's sort of a catch-22 so um what do you have a request for an IT system and where what's the status of that we actually do have a request for the CWIS system which is a really great um uh child welfare system that I believe it is in 45 or 50 states already so we're sort of behind the defense with that and um that's that's unusual that's unusual um so IT is terrible yeah so we have a two million dollar appropriation from last year and the issue is that it's uh believe it's a nine module system so that and it's a we will get federal matching as long as we can have a commitment that we're going to fulfill all nine modules so we are starting slowly and we are hoping to get going on the first module but I'd like to also address that issue of uh whether we've had a child um child advocate in terms of they did make a request even if they had direct access what we're using a lot of times are spreadsheets and this would require our staff is then try to pull together spreadsheets in order to give that information to them and as you know our system is really stressed and that would simply uh serve to take away from what our primary function is which is serving the youth and children okay and if though this system case management system that nine modules were to be fully implemented would that replace some of the individual spreadsheets that you're using absolutely yeah okay and that was my under my guess is that you have various different systems for logging lots of different things but there's not a comprehensive database that where you keep all of the information is that is that right that's 100 accurate various is various systems various little uh spreadsheets little here there everywhere and then people have to get together every nine again to try to compare notes so that we can have accurate data yeah sorry about that and it's not my one question about that is it uh are we and will this be integrated with the integrated eligibility system or is this the separate system that we're talking about I think this is the this is a separate system it's it will be integrated with the eligible eligible eligibility system because part of really what's really driving us is to try to get the 4e drawdown so that we'll have that financial module along with the case management module sort of working together it's going to be a multi-year process as you can imagine but no once we finally have it up and running it'll be great to have all those different systems integrated yes it will and I know we've been working on it for a while so I hope that we are making some progress but I think it's so key it is absolutely key but senator comings has a question I know you wanted to say something more deputy commissioner but let's let's follow up with the IT stuff I just wanted to know what's the price tag of all nine watches you know it's it's this is the last that I heard so it may be more at this point yeah everything is going up in price but it was 22 million and we would be looking to get 11 million from the feds so that's the last number but it may be more but is there anything in the infrastructure bill or anywhere in our federal expansion dollars internet expansion dollars that would allow for use of those funds for these purposes do you know I'm not certain I'm not certain I would have to check I know that I'm always after those federal dollars because I think it could be it's a it's a one-time spend it's critical for systemic infrastructure communications and I think the issue isn't just the money it's also that our IT ADS is really backed up there's just a lot of work to be done and there's a queue okay thank you senator hardy did you have another question well I'm curious about Jennifer you mentioned you know not wanting to have the adversarial role with the child advocates office and your suggestion about talking to somebody sort of in your department your equivalent department in New Hampshire would be helpful if that's a good idea but do you are you concerned looking I thank you for your very specific suggestions in the bill I love that kind of thing but are you concerned that it would be adversarial is your office worried about that and what can we do in the language to prevent that so I I have heard from other states that it can be adversarial and that's sort of the nature of the office you know when you have a system systems often do you know try to protect themselves right I mean it's not I don't think I'm saying anything out of turn and I think that when I talk about working with legal aid what I really mean is you can develop relationships and develop trust over time and that serves to break down a lot of barriers to sharing information with each other and trusting what each other is going to do with that information and so I think that how this office is set up and how it starts what the people that you put into it and what the advisory council recommends those will all be really important in making sure that the department and others throughout the state work well with the office because it won't only be the department that may have conflict with the office what may well be prosecutors it may well be public defenders you know there are all sorts of things that happen you know the public defender system is chronically underfunded and people end up criticizing some of the work that they do because they don't have enough time to spend with their clients but that's not a problem that the office of child advocate can resolve in the same way that I don't think that the office of child advocate is going to resolve things like the current hatton problem you know we know what happened at current hatton and it's the problem is that we don't have licensing of organizations that would allow us to go in and do something about what happened at current hatton so I don't think the child advocate can do anything about that they can you know they they are telling people to go to call the centralized intake when there are complaints which is what happens in vermont right now and that's where the current hatton some of the current hatton and any other institution complaints came to when then you do the investigation and you issue your licensing reports but I don't think the advocate's going to get at that kind of problem thank you I know this is a conversation we're going to have to have and that's exactly why I keep asking about mandatory reporter connections with the advocate's office so that's a that's a huge concern that we all have it goes to believing children too right I mean it goes to when a child reports something how what do you believe and do parents believe do and do administrators believe and and that's you know that's a human problem yes and but so key to all the work that you were doing everyone is here so deputy commissioner red key did you have you wanted to have further comments so why don't you go ahead and then we're going to move on to susanna davis thank you um you all mentioned how jennifer was making more of a nice detailed examination of the bill and I wanted to just sort of pull back a little bit and look at the bill globally in terms of talking about what the advocate from do ham true was talking about in terms of you know mandated reporters or the case management system and that sounds like they have what 6.5 staff and about 750 to 800 thousand dollars in the budget and I'm looking at this bill here which has what two people and then she also mentioned that there would need to be admins and I just don't see how that bill would manage to do the job that the bill is trying to do also looking at how when jennifer did start talking she mentioned the report from uvm and also the the other reports that we do have in terms of oversight of um our agency and what we do with those reports we don't simply just you know look at them we actually go through them line by line we talk to our operations staff our line staff and we do come up with specific uh ideas and things to implement in order to address those situations that are found in the report so to me when I look at uh the advocate I see a lot of overlap that I things that we're already doing in terms of we have our ls side to do investigations we have trici casanova who does who's our icpc compact administrator and it's very knowledgeable in that area I don't even try to you know look at that myself I just ask her questions because she knows it all so I just feel that and looking at the the office itself versus what we're doing and in addition to our trying to be far more robust in answering complaints and being very responsive to our constituents I just don't feel that it's necessarily joined the meal answers the question that you need to picture you're looking to answer okay thank you I think we I think that's a thank you but we will continue to look at the bill and and try to resolve some of the issues that have come up obviously New Hampshire's population is uh greater than ours and so hopefully the we can scale it to Vermont as we go forward but your your point is well taken appreciate thank you thank you I should go ahead one that one question for senator hardy well just quick question deputy commissioner of and this might be for for katie our our attorney but can you send us that report that you mentioned we may have seen it but we get so many reports it would be nice to just highlight it and absolutely this is the one that they think we should look at that would be great sure yeah thank you you raised the issue of those two reports and we probably should take a look at them in the context of this bill right and go ahead and it might be interesting to know what you did take from those reports and what you're asking on from sure thanks okay um we're going to move on to susannah davis and amy rose I know you are here and amy I'm going to ask you a question is it uh obligatory that you've testified today or could we have you in the next time we look at the bill I am happy to testify at your convenience thank you okay thank you I think we'll do that now give the committee a chance to take a quick break after we um listen to susannah davis thank you so much for your flexibility thank you susannah welcome it's good to see you good morning madam chair thank you for having me uh why don't you just go right ahead with testimony and looking I can't remember did you accept something at the air already or no I did not submit my testimony and I'll actually be quite brief with uh with my comments because I think you've heard a lot about the structural logistical and and other organizational hurdles um and benefits related to creating this office in this position oh excuse me for the record susannah davis racial equity director for the state so you you've heard a lot about the logistical and the organizational issues and in previous testimony when this was being covered in the house I did come in and discuss some of the benefits of creating such an office so I'll review a little bit of that and then highlight one note um that comes from an addition to the bill that I'd like to point out for the committee so I'll just start by saying that um I am here in support of the creation of an office of childism family advocate this is a role that does in some ways resemble my own and in some ways also resembles a close colleague of mine the executive director at the human rights commission so in our roles we are tasked with evaluating where state government is in its delivery of services treatment of staff and its overall system in the ways in which they do or do not support people from historically oppressed groups in my case that focus is on paper supposed to be about racial groups although you can't talk about racial equity or inequity without talking about intersectional approaches for example we know that this is of course mental health and lifespan is related to health we know that in the united states members of the lgbtqia plus population are more likely to be assaulted injured or murdered for their identity we also know that within that population trans women of color have the highest rate of being assaulted or murdered for their identity and so when we think about the ways in which race intersects with other identities for historically marginalized or oppressed groups we find that there's a lot of overlap with our work and the work of colleagues around the state so in thinking about the office of child youth and family advocates i think that it would be very beneficial to have such an office or at least a position of that nature in state government because it helps to add eyes to the ways in which our systems are helping or harming individuals now we know that people of color are already at disproportionately higher rates of negative outcomes by state government in a number of measures whether it's public safety education and academic outcomes health outcomes but we also know that when we break that down and again using an intersectional lens and look at the youth population the population of people who tend to have less political agency less social capital less financial capital and so the intersection of those two identities does make youth of color particularly vulnerable in the youth system in the state we also know that as was said earlier the state borders in New England tend to be rather fluid and of course having less personal agency means children often get shuffled around whether or not it's what they want or whether they've established meaningful and helpful relationships with trusted adults or with peers wherever they've been planted so having another person who can have eyes on the situation and be able to say not just with best for youth perhaps when they're not in regular contact with their item or not just with best for the system and what we see as expediency but also how are those two things what is the synergistic effect right sometimes government objectives are not necessarily aligned with human objectives or individual objectives and having somebody who can be quality independent of state government to be able to look at that is beneficial that's not to say of course that I don't trust the the work to AHS so that DCS are doing I have really enjoyed my relationship with my colleagues in DCS and I have found that a lot of the decisions that they make are very sound and are well-reasoned and thought through despite that we know that we didn't get to where we are in the United States overnight our systems don't look the way that they do through quick six month rewrites of policy and so there are a lot of deeply embedded disparities that do need to be rooted out and I can just think of a few for example we know that families of color are more likely to have complaints made against them cases brought against them they're more likely to have cases opened for much longer and to be subjected to a higher level of scrutiny less respect and uh flexibility you say and to have their needs unmet for example I received outreach from one parent a person of color here in Vermont who informed me of all kinds of challenges related to language access whether or not the right social workers or translators would be available during visits whether or not there was regular communication and again I see the deputy commissioners on the line and she was extremely helpful in working with me to understand the details of these cases and they were also going to frustration because it was often the case that I would ask a question about this about the matter and be told it's not in the notes we were the social worker doesn't recall and so at that point we have gaps of information that could potentially be either filled in or more deeply investigated by someone in an office like the one being proposed so um those are some of the issues of course I'm not going to belabor the point but I did just want to note one curiosity in the bill which is the establishment of both the oversight commission and the advisory council and I I think that those of you around the table by now know that um I usually have touch points with a lot of the board and commissions that are created in the state because of course inequity presents itself everywhere and so while I'm not particularly surprised at the creation of working groups here I am hesitant about there being two separate ones for two reasons number one it adds to government bloat and just on a personal level I find that that can increase in efficiency and make silos taller and the second reason is because I want to acknowledge that the advisory council's role appears to be uh advice from people with lived experience which is tremendously important in any equity work and so I applaud and I value that and yet looking at the oversight board it also appears that there are people with lived experience who are expected to be part of that board too and so I wonder what might be reasoning for having two separate working groups and whether one is inherently disempowered by the nature of their duties for example if the oversight board has a little bit more authority to perform oversight over the work of the office of child youth and family advocates and the advisory committee may have less a cloud or less influence or less authority to do the same level of oversight then we are whisking um undervaluing their contributions and undervaluing their work by having them be separate so there are a number of ways that we could look at that one option might be to combine the two that would lead to a group of a size of 18 which is no small number and perhaps we could tweak that number um another option might be to broaden the scope of the advisory council that's probably a little bit less of a preferred option for me um I do think that perhaps combining the group or at least expanding the oversight commission so that it has that broader representation of people with lived experience but doesn't necessarily have to run the risk of being duplicative might be a good option of course um you all have spent a lot of time you and your colleagues in the house have spent a lot of time deliberating this so um I'll trust your judgment on that but that is one piece that I think is important to note this is very much a balancing of being having process equity versus maintaining efficiency and streamlining a process so those are my initial thoughts here thank you for listening and of course if you have any questions or feedback I'm happy to address it thank you very much this is a this is a very helpful perspective that you've raised we appreciate it is there can you put some of this in a short test written testimony that Aaron could post for us happy to yeah that would be great thank you questions committee thank you so long that's nice to see you um uh I appreciate your comments about the two committees I noted that too and was wondering why do we need both um but I'm wondering you know you probably heard some of our discussion about where to place the office in you know outside state government some place in state government your office which has a similar role it's different but similar is an agency of administration I believe um yeah where do you have an opinion about where the best play it you also missed the human rights commission which is sort of part of state government but not I don't think they're competitive in the agency anywhere but do you have an opinion about where this should be put you know it's oh just last sound you just are muted for some reason can we hear you yeah yes yes I'm willing to admit when it's my fault but this time it wasn't I don't know what happened um in any event the yes this is a tricky question I'm usually asked some version of it whenever we're considering creating a new um a new agency I know that this uh the office or the the advocate and the advocate's office are serving in the role of what was described earlier as a watchdog function and um it is my opinion that any role that is meant to serve a watchdog function in government is best when it is independent of government um that is just my general overarching opinion on any such role now specifically with my role my role is not independent with government it is embedded in an agency and um you know I am serving in an administration that I don't worry about in terms of supporting my work I have counterparts all around the country who do my work who have a different uphill battle to fight because they have to legitimize their work to their own principle and I don't have to do that and so um my my recommendation that roles like this be independent is not based on my personal experience uh it is just based on the fact that we don't know who the next admin is going who's going to lead the next admin and when we set up these roles it's important that we set them up for success regardless of who follows not the players currently on the board but those who appear in the future so for that reason it's my strong recommendation that any role serving a watchdog function over state government should be independent of state government now that said that does come at a trade-off um with resourcing right our is this role being actively thought about in breath and blended budget is this role being supported with a supporting agency and I think that right now the way that things are set up is that one thing when officers or commissions are independent or quality independent they tend not to be as well resourced as they need to be but I don't want to treat that as if it's a given we can create an independent or quality independent office and also commit to budgeting and staffing it fairly and appropriately so right now we have we exist in a situation where it tends to be a trade-off but I contend that it shouldn't have to be and so creating creating this advocate position in the office in a way that is independent or quality independent I think is ideal structurally and to protect us against powerful bad actors in the future who may not support the work and I would like to see a commitment from the state to genuinely staffing and resourcing this work so that it's not just a um so that it's not just decoration right it's not just there for show and it's really empowered to to do genuine advocacy and to to do the work so I'm I don't know if I've really answered that for you but I hope you have oh that's helpful thank you okay any other questions folks okay this has been really very informative this morning we appreciate everyone's time and effort and bringing us information and Amy Rose we will contact you and have you on the agenda the next time we take the bill up does that work for you that will work wonderfully thank you thank you thank you for being patient with us appreciate it I know that you have a tremendous interest in this and we do want to hear your comments thank you all right so committee I think we will uh we'll take a short break and we'll move on to our introduction to 655