[B]URLINGTON — Campaign for Vermont called for the establishment of a child advocate, the implementation of new technology and more results-based accountability in Vermont’s Agency of Human Services in a report released Monday.
“With an agency this large and a mission this critical, it is shocking how very little accountability is built into the system,” Cyrus Patten, the group’s executive director, said at a new conference at the Center for Media and Democracy in Burlington.
The policy group’s seven-point report outlines reforms to make the AHS more “effective and efficient,” Patten said.
The agency is the largest sector of state government and makes up almost half of the state’s general fund budget.
Patten, who introduced himself as a licensed social worker with more than a decade of experience, said the report includes recommendations that have been made to the administration, and draws on his experience and that of his former colleagues in the Agency of Human Services.
“None of our recommendations are revolutionary,” Patten said, noting that a few points in the report overlap with suggestions from the Governor’s Council on Pathways from Poverty. “Our recommendation is to follow through.”
The report, titled “A New Social Contract,” is the sixth set of policy recommendations that the group has released. Previous reports tackled economic development, energy, education and ethics.
The Campaign for Vermont document calls for greater oversight of AHS and strict adherence to results in the state budgeting process. The report says the state must allocate appropriations based on performance.
“Are we going to continue to fund these programs, all of them, blank check, without knowing if these programs are working?” Patten asked.
Patten said the AHS structure is too isolating and and it discourages cross-departmental collaboration.
“One of the biggest barriers to information sharing is workload,” Cindy Walcott, deputy commissioner of the Department for Children and Families, told the House Human Services Committee last week.
Walcott offered that insight as the committee works through S.9, a wide-ranging child protection reform bill. Budget constraints in past years have led the department to shift some administrative responsibilities to social workers, she said.
The CFV report encourages the creation of a child advocate position to oversee and monitor Vermont’s child protection system. S.9 originally included a child advocate position, but that section of the bill was removed in response to state budget constraints.
Patten urged the state to invest in a new technology system for the AHS. Many of the agency’s programs are based on a 35-year-old system that Patten said hinders the AHS in serving Vermonters.
The agency is in the process of reviewing proposals for a new IT system to manage eligibility for Medicaid, food stamps and other benefits programs.
House lawmakers cut in half the amount the governor had requested for the new integrated eligibility system in the capital bill budget. Legislators have been critical of the hefty price tag, which according to some estimates could be as much as $129 million. In the aftermath of the state’s failed Vermont Health Connect system, lawmakers have called for greater oversight of large IT projects.
Patten said that the IT project needs to be a priority for the state, but questioned the state’s cost estimates. He said that needs could be met by software “essentially off the shelf.”
