Director's Message

July 29, 2005

To: DHS employees

From: Bryan Johnston, Interim DHS Director

I hope you’ve had a good week. I have had one of the most interesting and encouraging weeks of my tenure here. I’ve chosen four anecdotes:

*A Day in Portland

*Tribal Relations

*A Day in Medford, and

*Food stamps

My apologies if this message is a little longer than most. I wanted to take the time to try to share why I’m so enthusiastic about who you are and the importance of the work you do.

Before I begin, though, I promised to dedicate this director’s message to Jan Hall, Social Service Specialist, in the Child Welfare Program in Medford. She represents a whole class of DHS employees who hit "delete" automatically when this weekly message comes out - about 3,000 people. She promised she would read this one, so I promised I’d dedicate it to her.

Day in Portland

I spent a very educational and encouraging day in Portland. It started with a meeting of the Leadership Round Table at the Portland Library. DHS has been an eager partner in this effort to improve education in Multnomah County. Chuck Dimond provided the continuity of our efforts as directors come and go.

Dr. Susan Allan and I then spent an hour with former Governor Barbara Roberts. I had set the meeting to connect our Public Health Officer with Governor Roberts to increase her background on Oregon. Governor Roberts, of course, gave generously of her time and knowledge. This 2005 Legislature has passed legislation naming our main office in Salem after Governor Roberts, an honor well deserved.

After lunch, we toured the Portland-area Hollywood Office with SDA Manager Jerry Burns and Dianne Yongchu, Rob Olsen, and Stephanie McCray, all DHS operations managers. Hollywood is like the United Nations office for DHS. Staff there assist clients in 17 different languages. The building bursts at the seams, originally with 43 employees and now staffed at 86. Dianne has literally designed and built many of the cubicles and Rob was working on a filing project designed to free up floor space while we were there. We had a pizza lunch and talked to the staff, and while the conditions are not ideal (one side of the building sweats and the other side freezes) the spirits are high and the commitment to serve clients is ever present. They were an impressive group.

Tribal Relations

Our state is also the home of nine sovereign nations - the tribes of Oregon. I met with two groups of tribal representatives this week. The first was with the Indian Council on Addictions. At their meeting, I walked in on a presentation about recovery. Although too long to recount here, it was suggesting a very thoughtful whole person, whole community response to the problem of addiction, "…a healthy tree returned to a sick forest will soon be ill again."

My second meeting was a welcoming reception held for me by the tribes and hosted by the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde. Unlike some of our sister states, Oregon enjoys a very good relationship with its tribes and this collection of people was a fine example of that. For the fifth time in recent years, they walked a new DHS director through the issues. Working with the tribes is very much in Oregon’s interest.

Day in Medford

My travels next led to Medford. In the morning, I introduced an Ethics program being taught there, met and chatted with the local SDA staff, did an interview with the Medford Mail Tribune, and toured the OnTrack program. Active for the last 18 years, this program has grown into a conglomerate of residential and day care treatment for drug-addicted moms and dads, a day care parenting program, and a housing program.

We met 11 children under the age of five and visited with about 25 young mothers in the program who are still struggling with their addiction issues. The meeting was emotional as they shared their stories and thanked the OnTrack program and DHS for being such a supportive partner.

Before heading over to the news conference on the local meth grants, we got word from Public Health that the first confirmed case of West Nile virus had been discovered in a bird in Jackson County. Emilio deBess, from DHS Public Health, quickly prepared us on the key points to discuss with the local media. The news conference was a convergence of dozens of key partners in Jackson county, non-profits, public officials and the news media. We brought 50 copies of our news release and had to make more. I was there at the event as the state official, joined by Lyn Hennion, of the Oregon Community Foundation, Carin Niebuhr, Jackson County Health and Human Services and Meth Task Force Coordinator, Susan Slack, Jackson County Administrator, and Brad Earle, local United Way Board President. After the awards were presented, I was interviewed by all three local television stations and the local newspaper - on the meth issue and on West Nile.

Meth is the scourge of our time and the rest of the nation is just starting to realize that. The nation will be looking to Oregon for leadership while Oregon may well be looking to Jackson County.

Food Stamps

Oregon has been wrestling with our food stamp error rate for the past few years. We have a rapidly expanding program and one of the highest penetration rates in the nation - that is, we get food stamps to where they need to go.

The federal government has not given as much consideration to our rapid expansion and deep penetration as we would like. They concentrate, understandably, on error rate. Because ours is above the national average, they have imposed penalties. Even though our rate at improvement has been superb, they have imposed penalties.

DHS has renewed our efforts to drive the error rate down. Well, the most recent results are in and they are outstanding! We have just logged a 2.5% error rate, the lowest in Oregon’s history and well below the national average. Congratulations to everyone! Please keep it up! This is outstanding.

This message is intended for all department employees. Please read it electronically, if possible. Managers and supervisors are asked to share the message each week with employees who do not have email access.

If you have a disability and need this message to be provided to you in another format, please send an email to dhs.forms@state.or.us, or call (503) 947-5107. You can also fax your request to (503) 373-7690, or call (503) 947-5080 for TTY service. If you know of others who need this accommodation, please let them know it is available.