*Date and location is subject to change, please check calendar
Past meetings:
January 2012
Our
new year started off great with our January Partners meeting and have
to give a BIG THANKS to our guests, newly appointed DFPS Commissioner
Howard Baldwin and DFPS CFO, Cindy Brown. Please view the presentation
provided by both our guests.
November 2011:
Joyce James and Sheila Craig from HHSC's Center for the Elimination of Disproportionality and Disparities (CEDD) presented on addressing disproportionality and disparities across systems. We were joined by our other stakeholder groups, Texas Children's Mental Health Forum and the Texas Juvenile Justice Roundtable. Please view the CEDD description and complete Texas data across systems.
October 2011
Last meeting, we were co-hosted OneVoice Texas in Houston. Please view this summary for detailed information about the meeting.
September 2011
Christine Gendron and project team members from TNOYS' Voices of Experience Project presented their research and recommendations from the report, Voices of Experiences: Mental Health Supports for Homeless and Transitioning Youth. Additionally, Trista Miller and Kristina Pfeiffer participated on a panel to discuss their experiences aging out of foster care and solutions for supporting the needs of transitioning youth. Please view meeting summary.
August 2011
David Whiteside, CPS Director of Purchased Client Services presented on the PEI Budget Cuts and a discussion followed. View the presentation slides provided by DFPS and the meeting notes.
July 2011
SB 653--Creation of the Texas Juvenile Justice Department (TJJD) provided
by Lauren Rose, Mental Health and Juvenile Justice Policy Fellow at Texans Care for Children. Click
HB 1 vs. SB 1 from Jane Burstain of the Center for Public Policy Priorities (Updates: The Senate bill did not wind up using funds from the Rainy Day Fund, and the actual size of the Nurse-Family Partnership cuts is 37%
New initiatives by Casey Family Programs Texas State Strategic Teams. The Appleseed Long-Term Foster Care presentation can be found here, and the Transition Center Convening Summary of Proceedings can be found here.
Child Protective Services 2011 Budget Request. The agenda for this meeting can be found here.
How transitioning services and transition centers are impacted by the Fostering Connections to Success and Increasing Adoptions Act.
We heard from DFPS's Liz Kromrei, CPS Director of Services and Larry Burgess, CPS Fostering Connections Specialist Lead. The Partners meeting was followed by a Transition Center Improvement Circle meeting from 3-4:30.
Improvement Circles:
Quality and consistency of front-end behavioral and mental health assessments
Transition Centers
We heard from Richard Connell, Ph.D., a child psychologist who sees foster children in Central Texas, who presented on front-end behavioral and mental health assessments for foster children. We also made decisions about the specific deliverables that each of the two Improvement Circles will work on in the coming months. View proposed deliverables.
