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Children's Services

The next National Take Back Day is this Saturday, April 24, 2021. The October 2020 Take Back Day brought in 985,392 pounds (492.7 tons) of unused, unwanted, or expired medication, the most in the program’s history.

Join the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), the International Association of Campus Law Enforcement Administrators, and NASPA-Student Affairs Administrators in Higher Education in encouraging your campus community to participate this Saturday. Collection sites staffed by authorized law enforcement officials will be open from 10:00 am–2:00 pm — find a site near you.

Visit here to learn more.

Capitolwire: Senate Appropriations Chair Browne Says Governor’s Proposed Budget Doesn’t Do Much About PA’s Structural Deficit; Need More Thought About How to Best Use State’s Assets and Improve Productivity

By Chris Comisac, Bureau Chief, Capitolwire

HARRISBURG (April 23) — The state Senate Appropriations Committee closed the book on another year of state budget hearings Thursday, with one of the more interesting observations made during the multiple weeks of hearings coming on Thursday from committee majority chair Sen. Pat Browne, R-Lehigh, during his closing comments.

With all the talk by Gov. Tom Wolf and his administration about the need to raise taxes, including a 46-percent hike of the state Personal Income Tax, to make more “investments” as well as address the commonwealth’s structural deficit, Browne noted the governor’s plan, ultimately, doesn’t do much about the deficit.

Browne, pointing to information supplied to his committee by the Wolf administration and that it differentiates from Senate GOP appropriations financial data, acknowledged that for about two years the increased revenue from the PIT hike would help with the deficit, but by Fiscal Year 2023-24, the deficit retuned because of continued growth of state spending.

“Taking us out to post-stimulus year [Fiscal year] 2023-24, the growth of expenditures [being] $591 million above the projections that you had provided us – this is a point for us to talk about in terms of our different assumptions – puts us again in fiscal deficit in that year, notwithstanding the fact that we’ve increase our Personal Income Tax by 46 percent,” said Browne. “So, it’s [PIT hike] not a one-time solution. It takes us through a couple years, but it’s just a couple-years solution.”

“At the end of the day, we go through this process of greatly increasing our revenue capacity – I would argue by potentially sacrificing our competitive position – but only taking us two years out to still be in fiscal deficit,” Browne continued. “That leads us to a conversation of where do we go? How do we solve this challenge? Because if it’s just the growth of mandatory expenditures that we want to fulfill for the people for whom we want to fulfill, even with the proposal you’re presenting on behalf of the chief executive, we’re not solving the fiscal challenge.”

Browne noted that some will say the solution is to increase revenue again through additional taxation, but he said it’s his belief there comes a point when taxation begins to produce diminishing returns – lower revenue – even with higher tax rates.

Pointing to Pennsylvania’s growing demographic issues – the state is becoming older with fewer people of working age, meaning more government spending for the state’s aging population but less productivity, and consequently available tax revenue, to pay for that spending due to fewer workers – Browne said, “We’ve got bigger problems to address.”

He said he doesn’t have a solution, but added, “The only thing that I can think we need to work on is how do we use Pennsylvania’s enormous inventory of valuable assets that we have available to us – our higher education institutions, our natural [resource] assets, our cultural assets, diversity – all the things that we have – to maximize their value to increase productivity.”

The state’s revenue picture has improved dramatically from prior estimates – as of the end of March, the state is $1.3 billion ahead of revenue estimates – thanks in large part to the various COVID-19 federal stimulus packages implemented during the past several months, and those figures do not include the potential impacts from the latest $1.9 trillion federal stimulus, of which Pennsylvania state government is expected to get $7.3 billion (with local governments to get another nearly $6 billion).

While some lawmakers argue the federal stimulus dollars should not be used as an excuse to avoid raising taxes to address what they say are the state’s spending needs as well as the structural deficit, others have argued that as the state’s economy and many businesses are still emerging from a COVID-19 environment – with the state still having 319,000 fewer people working than a year ago, and 369,200 fewer available jobs – it’s counterproductive to put on the economy and employers additional fiscal burdens, such as the proposed PIT hike, a new natural gas severance tax, combined profits reporting for the purposes of determining corporation taxes, a substantial hike of the minimum wage and the continued pursuit of a carbon tax on the state’s electricity producers as part of the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative.

The current fiscal year ends on June 30, with the new one to start on July 1.

Wednesday, April 28, 2021 3:00 pm–4:30 pm ET
Webinar Registration

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) is hosting a webinar to advance learning and share recommendations from the intensive on Quality Jobs Equal Quality Care: Building Capacity in the Direct Care Workforce that was held at ADvancing States’ Home and Community-Based Services (HCBS) Conference on December 3, 2020.

The direct service workforce (DSW) plays a key role in efforts to rebalance long-term services and supports systems from institutional to community-based services. Direct service workers provide essential support for many people, contribute to overall health care quality, and promote community inclusion and independence.

Many stakeholders can help to build the capacity of the DSW, but state Medicaid agencies are uniquely positioned to lead changes. This webinar will highlight capacity building strategies shared by states during the HCBS Conference intensive. The webinar is open to the public and will focus on strategies for state Medicaid agencies, state agency partners, managed care plans, and HCBS providers.

By the end of this interactive webinar, participants will:

  1. Learn more about DSW challenges, approaches, and promising practices related to providing person-centered care, coordinating care across settings and systems, and encouraging professional development.
  2. Hear directly from state Medicaid agencies about promising practices supporting capacity building in the DSW.
  3. Provide feedback through interactive polling and discussion on the recommendations identified by participants of the HCBS Conference intensive.
  4. Find out more about an upcoming learning collaborative and other future DSW learning opportunities for state Medicaid agencies.

Featured Facilitators

  • Michelle Reynolds, PhD, University of Missouri Kansas City (UMKC), Director of Individual Advocacy and Family Support, UMKC Institute for Human Development
  • Erika Robbins, Vice President, The Lewin Group
  • Barbara Kleist, Program Manager, Institute on Community Integration, University of Minnesota

 Please contact HCBS with any questions.

The next Managed Long-Term Services and Supports (MLTSS) Subcommittee meeting is planned for Tuesday, May 4, 2021 via webinar from 10:00 am–1:00 pm. To participate in this meeting, registration is required. Following the completion of the registration, a confirmation email will be sent containing information about joining the webinar.

Thursday, May 20, 2021
12:00 pm–1:00 pm EDT, 11:00 am–12:00 pm CDT, 10:00 am–11:00 am MDT, 9:00 am–10:00 am PDT

Tasha Perkins Holmes, MOT, OTR/L

Instructor Bio:

Tasha Perkins Holmes, MOT, OTR/L holds a Bachelor of Arts in Sociology from the University of Maryland, Baltimore County and her graduate degree in Occupational Therapy from Nova Southeastern University. She is an experienced clinician with over 16 years of clinical experience.

Tasha has worked in a variety of settings and with different age groups, ranging from pediatrics to geriatrics. Tasha has a special interest in school-based service provision, particularly using the teletherapy service delivery model. In this role, she has provided school-based OT services nationally and internationally. In addition to direct treatment services, Tasha also has experience teaching at the collegiate level as an instructor in the Occupational Therapy Assistant Program at Central Piedmont Community College.

Tasha is passionate about health equity and the impact of bias on the care delivered and received and has created and delivered content on Diversity and Health Care for national continuing education providers such as OccupationalTherapy.com. Tasha’s interest in this topic has grown and evolved as a health care consumer, a health care provider, and as a woman of color. As a clinician working in a diverse community, she shares her experience and perspective to improve access, service delivery, and the health care experience for pediatric clients and their families.

Objectives: At the end of the session the learner will:

  • Identify barriers to health care provision in diverse populations.
  • Describe ways to be more inclusive when providing health care services.
  • Discuss benefits of providing inclusive health care services.

Audience: This webinar is intended for all members of the rehabilitation team, including medical staff, physical therapists, occupational therapists, speech language pathologists, licensed psychologists, mental health professionals, and other interested professionals.

Level: Intermediate

Certificate of Attendance: Certificates of attendance are available for all attendees. No CEUs are provided for this session.

Registration: Registration is complimentary for members of IPRC/RCPA. Registration fee for non-members is $179. Not a member yet? Consider joining today. Multiple registrations per organization are permitted. Register here to participate.