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Children's Services

Text of Media Advisory:

What: House Appropriations Committee Chairman Stan Saylor released the schedule for upcoming budget hearings. Hearings will take place on the House floor in order to allow for social distancing, and masks will be required for all members, staff, and testifiers. The House floor will be cleaned and sanitized between hearings. Hearings will feature a mix of in-person and virtual testimony.

Who: Representative Stan Saylor (R-York), Chairman of the House Appropriations Committee; members of the Appropriations Committee; and various heads of state agencies.

When: Tuesday, February 16, 2021 through Thursday, March 4, 2021. A detailed schedule is available here.

Where: Pennsylvania House of Representatives Chamber, Harrisburg.

The final three days of hearings (March 2, 2021 – March 4, 2021) will take place in the Forum building, Harrisburg to accommodate in-person testimony.

Live Webstreaming: Available at this link.

Photojournalists seeking access to the House floor during the hearings should contact Mike Straub in the Speaker’s Office at 717-260-6397.

Media Contact: Neal Lesher, Cell: 717-507-9240

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As part of the ongoing intensive behavioral health services (IBHS) implementation, the Office of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services (OMHSAS) has released an updated IBHS frequently asked questions (FAQ) guide. This guide represents a composite of updated inquiries regarding the standards and will be updated as a companion piece to the implementation.

The RCPA Children’s IBHS Workgroup continues their work on standards and implementation values for our members and will convey their findings to the Children’s Division via alerts, infos, and regularly scheduled divisional meetings. Contact RCPA Children’s Division Director Jim Sharp with questions.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
February 9, 2021

Harrisburg, PA – While conversations with the entire General Assembly on the state’s vaccine plan will remain ongoing, Governor Tom Wolf’s Administration also sought to provide a mechanism for accurate, timely information sharing via a streamlined set of communicators between these two branches of state government. As a result, today, the Wolf Administration announced that it is establishing a joint task force with members from each legislative caucus who can share vaccine information and communicate issues and solutions expediently on behalf of and to the broader General Assembly.

“We have a good working relationship with our legislators, and we know they are the eyes, ears, and voices for Pennsylvanians,” Governor Wolf said. “The feedback they receive from their local communities is extremely important, particularly as the commonwealth continues to improve upon this once-in-a-generation vaccine rollout. Working with leaders from each caucus in the General Assembly, we are creating a task force to ensure collaboration and strengthen communications about the state’s vaccine plan.”

Task force members will represent their caucus’s point of view and work to streamline conversations to focus and drive issues of importance. Wolf Administration members will serve as task force members with the subject matter expertise to listen, collaborate, and provide information, answers, and suggestions to solve problems in a timely manner.

Members of the task force include co-chairs Acting Secretary of Health Alison Beam and Director of the Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency Randy Padfield; for the Senate Democratic Caucus, Senator Art Haywood; for the House Democratic Caucus, Representative Bridget Kosierowski; for the Senate Republican Caucus, Senator Ryan Aument; and for the House Republican Caucus, Representative Tim O’Neal.

The task force will be meeting as needed and providing updates to the full General Assembly via each of the task force members.

MEDIA CONTACT:  Lyndsay Kensinger