Anne L. Shenberger, President and CEO
Philadelphia Safe and Sound
February 21, 2008
Good afternoon Majority Leader and Chairwoman Tasco, Committee members and other members of City Council. I am Anne Shenberger, President and CEO of Philadelphia Safe and Sound. I thank our Board Chairman, Ernie Jones, and the other members of our Board, for their presence, support and leadership of our organization today and everyday.
Following the background presented by Ernie, my testimony will explain more specifically what Safe and Sound does and how we do it. I will, of course, focus in detail on the current budget situation—how we arrived in the predicament of needing to cut back programs and the steps we have taken to meet the lower budget target. Given the events earlier this week, we are happy that Mayor Nutter has stated his intention to restore what we believe are essential programs for children and families. I will also say that we sincerely regret the confusion and anxiety that has been created over the past several weeks for our providers, parents and children. We know that the problem has generated complaints and calls to Council as well as to the new Administration.
Before getting into the nuts and bolts of our organization, please allow me to tell you briefly about myself and the members of our staff. I am a graduate of Gettysburg College and earned a Master of Social Work from Bryn Mawr College. I enjoyed a 30-year career advocating for children and youth and improving services and systems in the fields of juvenile justice and child welfare with the Pennsylvania Department of Public Welfare, leaving as Director of the Southeast Region Office in 2006. I was eager and honored to be chosen to lead Safe and Sound because of the important role it plays, its record of quality work and its potential to be even better.
Since coming to Safe and Sound, I have focused on developing a talented and dedicated staff to improve financial management and administrative processes, upgrade program services, to make better use of our research capabilities, and to engage in effective communication, coordination and collaboration with city government and other partners. The members of our staff have the qualifications and commitment for Safe and Sound to excel.
The breadth and depth of skills and experience embedded in our staff team is required by the complexity and diversity of the work that Safe and Sound does and is reflected in the performance that we deliver. Safe and Sound’s core activities are: program development, project management, contract management and support, research and evaluation, and policy and advocacy. We are, in short, a resource for government, community organizations and citizens, all interested in advancing the well-being of Philadelphia’s children and youth.
Safe and Sound has been in on the ground floor, often collaborating with city government and other nonprofit agencies, using local data and national research and knowledge, to pinpoint needs of children and youth and craft programmatic solutions to address them. This is how the Youth Violence Reduction Partnership (YVRP), Adolescent Violence Reduction Partnership (AVRP), Beacon Centers, the Recreation Department’s Teen Centers and the Childcare Facilities Fund were born. We also have served government by staffing child-related initiatives such as the Blue Ribbon Commission on Children’s Behavioral Health and manage child and safety-related events such as the Children’s
Summit.
We also have been asked to manage major projects such as working with the former Department of Social Services to develop the Division of Social Services Cross Agency Response for Effective Services (DSS-CARES), an integrated data and case management system; managing the contracts for 14 community-based PTO providers and hiring 400 PTOs; we develop the RFP, manage the contracts, and monitor 11 curfew centers.
Safe and Sound’s research and evaluation capabilities are especially strong and fill a need for information-driven decision-making and action. We created a Centralized Data Repository (CDR) to pull together and analyze data from a variety of sources including the Police Department, Department of Human Services, Census Bureau, and the School District. With extensive statistical and mapping capabilities, Safe and Sound helps elected officials, city agencies, educational institutions and non-profit organizations improve services, achieve policy reforms, communicate more persuasively and secure funding for valuable programs.
We publish and disseminate our findings in accessible formats including research and policy briefs, program evaluations, geo-coded maps (including a recent project at the request of DHS for Police Commissioner Ramsey) and our core products of the annual Children’s Report Card and Community Report Cards and Children’s Budget. We are grateful to City Council for your unanimous vote last year to institutionalize the production of these documents.
I want to describe for you in some detail the work that Safe and Sound does to manage city-funded programs and support service providers in the community. This is the heart and soul of our organization because it directly touches the lives of children and families. And it is our mutual concern for these providers and citizens that is the focus of today’s inquiry.
All of the programs that Safe and Sound oversees or monitors were initiated to respond to data indicating that children and other community members were at-risk of committing violence or being victimized, or engaging in other unhealthy and unwise behaviors. The key programs are:
· Afterschool Programs
· Beacon Programs
· Youth Violence Reduction Partnership (YVRP)
· Adolescent Violence Reduction Partnership (AVRP)
· Parent Truant Officers (PTOs)
· Curfew Centers
· Families and Schools Together (FAST)
· Real Everyday Alternative Choices and Help (REACH)
We apply objective criteria for selecting Afterschool and Beacon program providers and locations for the programs. We make these decisions based on a competitive selective process. To determine the location of programs we identify high-crime neighborhoods overall; by the 17 and under age group, and by increases or decreases in Part 1 Major Crime committed by juveniles. Depending upon the focus of the programs, other criteria may be added to this neighborhood assessment (e.g., areas where child abuse and neglect is high). Once areas are identified, we analyze US Census data to identify areas where there are large concentrations of youth. Community resources that are youth-focused are then identified within the high-crime neighborhoods that have large concentrations of youth. All of this information is synthesized so that we place new programs in high-need, low resource areas. Once geographic areas are identified, an open RFP process is launched to select new service providers. Staff teams review and score proposals. Program elements scored include: agency organizational capacity; ability to engage the community; and the quality of their budget. Programs are ranked with awards going to the highest ranked providers.
Our work goes beyond simply issuing contracts and monitoring basic compliance. This is most apparent with our after school initiative, which Safe and Sound began managing in 2001. We are dedicated to serving children and families with “Best Practices,” which means we take steps to stay on top of national trends, set standards and provide regular feedback and supports that will foster the highest quality programs. Recently we instituted PCAPS, the Provider Contract Attendance, Payment and Performance System. This system captures information that enables providers to manage their programs more efficiently and accurately and provides Safe and Sound with accurate financial and programmatic oversight information. We have set curricular requirements for after school programs in the field of literacy and violence-prevention which foster quality, and provide a means for better evaluation. Providers participate in a comprehensive professional development program which Safe and Sound offers in partnership with the United Way. Programs are not useful unless parents can access them, so Safe and Sound developed an online program finder and a live parent assistance line to support families in their search for quality after school services.
Results of our efforts speak for themselves. Our afterschool programs help to keep kids out of the system. As you know, afterschool programs were created to address crime during the afterschool hours. And, our data show that delinquency and arrest rates for participants in the PSS network of afterschool programs in 2006-07 were lower than the citywide rates for youth. For every additional year of afterschool attendance, youth were 25% less likely to be arrested. Dependent care placement rates were also lower than the citywide rates. For every additional year of afterschool attendance, youth were 10% less likely to enter dependent care placement.
Likewise, Safe and Sound get very high marks from providers and parents. More than 90% of parents surveyed last year expressed satisfaction with the program attended by their child(ren) (69% were very satisfied). Eight-one percent of providers thought Safe and Sound was doing a good to excellent job of partnering with their agency to provide quality afterschool programs.
It is very important to note that 81% of the budget Safe and Sound receives from the Department of Human Services goes directly out to community-based providers to run programs for children. Another 14% of our funding from DHS is used to monitor programs for quality assurance and contract compliance, to provide technical assistance to the sites so as to facilitate the delivery of best practices, and developmentally appropriate services, to conduct research, and to evaluate programs to determine their impact.
Our administrative costs are under 5%. Therefore over 95% of our funding from DHS is allocated for direct services and program support.
Financial management of Safe and Sound is a complex enterprise owing to our numerous programs, large number of contractors and high volume of invoices and other financial transactions. In order to assure that both Safe and Sound and our primary funder, the City, have the same understanding of the progress of each year’s contracted scope of work and each years expenditures and revenues, a committee was established several years ago. The committee includes executive level budget staff from the Managing Director’s office, DHS and Safe and Sound as well as key programmatic staff from DHS and Safe and Sound. It meets monthly to review each line of the city-designed Safe and Sound performance report and to assess estimated versus actual expenditures so that the most effective use can be made of the funds allocated. The most recent meeting was held February 12, 2008. This process has enabled both the City and Safe and Sound to be “on the same page” with respect to all of the programs funded under the current contract. In addition to these monthly meetings, Safe and Sound has met weekly with program executives within the City in order to assure that the programmatic direction being taken was based on mutual agreement and partnership.
Through this type of face to face collaboration, the City has provided clarification on its expenditure expectations as well as raised any concerns that would need to be addressed by Safe and Sound financial staff. Over the past two years, Safe and Sound has made a number of improvements in its financial operations to both improve our performance and to be more responsive to the City’s needs for both information and accuracy in the financial information we provide. We are continuing to make improvements in this area.
Whereas Safe and Sound was launched with primarily foundation funding, and early on also captured significant federal and corporate grants, at this point in time, our budget is comprised of nearly all (98%) funding through DHS. Other resources come from other city departments, foundations, businesses and individuals. This allocation is consistent with our role as a support and intermediary for the city. Nevertheless, I have moved to renew and step up Safe and Sound’s external development efforts to generate more funds to complement and supplement city-sponsored initiatives. We are currently competing for a major federal grant and have our sights on other targets. We are also interested in collaborating with the city to raise local funds to support the Administration’s priorities for safety and youth development.
Our overall budget has grown over the past 3 years, from $34 million in FY ’06 to $50 million in FY ’07 to the $75 million that was initially contracted for FY ’08. With the growth in budget amount came a corresponding growth in programming.
Our Board Chair already has summarized how the budget problem that prompted this hearing occurred. Simply put, the previous Administration wanted to expand anti-truancy, after school and other prevention programs and allocated funds that were not ultimately available for this purpose. Despite Safe and Sound’s multiple efforts to submit lower budgets, we received in August, a contract signed by the Budget Office and the Law Department for $75 million containing a scope of work that included the expanded programs. On the strength of the city’s previous funding record, the Administration’s urging to proceed apace; and the contract provided, Safe and Sound acted to begin implementing the new initiatives, such as contracting with community agencies to hire 400 Parent Truant Officers to work on behalf of the city in partnership with the School District. We were advised by the former administration that a transfer ordinance would be passed when that did not happen we immediately wrote to all providers describing the tenuous funding situation and notifying them that Safe and Sound was assessing internal management actions it might need to take and urging that they do the same. In fact, Safe and Sound put a hold on filling budgeted positions. Since then we also have laid off employees. Our total savings are $1.4 million annually. Up until the end of the Street Administration, Safe and Sound submitted revised budgets but was told not to initiate any program cutbacks.
Upon first being notified by Mayor Nutter’s Administration on January 23, 2008 that a budget cut of $21 million would be required, Safe and Sound prepared recommendations for a reduced budget, effective March 1. We undertook this task with extreme care, knowing that any actions in this direction, however necessary, would inflict great pain and hardship on the affected provider agencies, employees and program participants. Expenditure projections were carefully reviewed and a process developed to make program reduction recommendations to meet the budget target. All new programs that were funded as part of the expansion effort for afterschool were proposed for elimination. But because it is so far into the budget year, existing programs also had to be included in the assessment for reduction and elimination.
The criteria used to assess programs for reduction and elimination were as follows:
· Utilization
· Qualitative performance as assessed by staff
· Quantitative School Age Child Care Environment Rating Scale (SACERS) score, a standard assessment tool for health and social services programs measuring primarily program interaction with children
· Geographic overlay to avoid significant imbalances or leaving communities devoid of programs
Significant cuts in Safe and Sound’s organization and operations were part of the recommended budget cuts. In fact we made a 30% reduction in authorized positions. These cuts include research, program management and support and reduction of administration of the organization.
We are well aware that this situation is causing serious disruption for providers, children and families, and Safe and Sound is doing whatever it can to minimize the inevitable hardship. We established a policy of responding to all provider calls within 24 hours and offering guidance and technical assistance. We also worked to assist providers in identifying alternate after school programs located within a half-mile radius of each reduced or eliminated program and looked into identifying any capacity that might be available. We contacted the Child Care Information Services office (CCIS) office and asked for their assistance in helping families locate programs, we provided subsidy information and applications to all who called. We encouraged providers and others to utilize our program finder and live phone assistance line. In addition, we have acted upon suggestions made by council during my meetings with you over the past several weeks. We are open to any other suggestions you may have in this regard.
As our chairman said, as troubled as we are by the current situation, we are also focused on the future. We want to be able to work together, to improve systems and programs, to capitalize on the resources, knowledge, talents and commitment that city government, other community partners and Safe and Sound can bring to the table to realize our vision for a safer and healthier childhood for every Philadelphian.
Thank you for listening. We will be happy to respond to your questions.
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