Detroit Charter Misses Out On Financial Oversight Opportunity

I seem to recall an item I worked on during the City Charter revision process which called for an Inspector General.  As the Charter has recently been passed by the vote, it would seem there should be option for the Inspector General to admiral some of the tasks of weeding out fraud, waste and abuse within departments, programs and contracts.  No one would listen to me, as usual.

See, the archaic Ombudsman is the only department other than Corporate Council who has powers of subpoena, which have never been used, seriously.  The Ombudsman ensconces individual report findings into aggregate data and dumps it on City Council in annual reports, so nothing ever gets fixed.  The office only reports on what it supposedly does to keep its out-dated paychecks a-coming.

Then, if City Council is to now go to Council by District, there busts another illogical fallacy to keep the Ombudsman.

I raise the Ombudsman because the Inspector General has no powers of subpoena, further limiting it potential.

In addition, it was never considered that the Inspector General could privately contract for investigation,which would entail appointment for special powers of subpoena.

Lastly, there was no referral mechanism for the Inspector General to report violations of law to Corporate Council for prosecution and recovery. Another missed opportunity for oversight.

Unfortunately, a great opportunity has been lost in the Inspector General because this would have strengthened the argument against the Emergency Manager.  It would have been one of those "why re-invent the wheel" contentions.

Oh well.  Now we have the same folks overseeing the same mismanagement. Just wait, there is more.
 Keep looking into the dark cavern of child welfare.  This is why I proposed getting the language of "children are our most precious treasures" put into the preamble of the Detroit City Charter.  It passed.

"Children are our most precious treasures" is code for posterity, future interests, economic stabalization, and it circumvents the FOIA exemptions and exclusions for audits and continuous quality improvements in program quality and delivery of services.

One of these days someone is going to listen and heed my advice.

Funding at risk for Detroit's social services

Detroit— The city is managing federal funding so poorly that it's risking future dollars for social service programs intended to help disadvantaged residents, officials examining Detroit's finances say.
State officials found numerous cases of misspending on salaries and other expenditures in the administration of Head Start, Women, Infants and Children nutrition support, home weatherization and other programs, according to the state's preliminary review of the city's finances.
That puts the city in a vulnerable spot as it seeks to convince state officials that it can handle its fiscal crisis without outside intervention. If Gov. Rick Snyder determines the city requires the oversight of an emergency manager, that person could bar the city from administering federal funds and instead give the job to Wayne County or a private company.

Economic Domestic Violence Against Children

If it is the last thing I do, I will make our lawmakers bow down and say "Medicaid fraud in child welfare" in public, loudly.

Poor people cannot lobby but we do have an internet presence and we do vote.

My response to the reintroduction of Violence Against Women's Act Op-Ed by U.W. Representative John Conyers, Jr.

Of course it is optimal for the posterity of the nation to target, as an immediate point of origin, the population of children, to prevent domestic violence, but this may only be done by recognizing a far more pervasive form of domestic violence entrenched within our society, and that is economic domestic violence.

Economic domestic violence is the ugly monster conceived under the darkness of regulation which survives without its natural predator of penalty, to launch multiple attacks upon the nation's health care system for children: Medicaid, CHIP and TRICARE.

Each incident of economic domestic violence against children must be considered as the individual filing of false claims, kiddy kickbacks, kiddy dumping, phantom services and double-billing under child welfare programs. Collectively, the pattern of practice of fraud, waste and abuse in child welfare services (i.e. foster care and adoption) have resulted in nothing less than a reign of economic terror upon our national treasures, the children.

Each year, hundreds of billions of dollars are violently taken from children under the guise of their best interest and no one will speak upon this. As a nation we have publicly acknowledged Medicare fraud with the intense partnership between the put children at risk as simply witnessed in income inequalities and its dramatic rise in poverty.

Until issues of fraud, waste and abuse in child welfare are included in the discussion, any legislation which does not provide for the amelioration of economic domestic violence against the children and their caretakers, is reduced to a political folly.

Michigan Will Not Discuss Health Care Fraud In Public

This is such an honor.  Michigan has denied me participation in the integrated care for Medicaid and Medicare eligibility model.

See, when I attended the first state integrated care stakeholder group, of course, I had to stand up and speak out when it was asked if there was any area left out of the discussion on Medicaid and Medicare.

Does anyone wish to take a guess on what I identified as being omitted from the discussion?  Ok, I will give you a hint....Fraud, waste and abuse.

Aghast did I leave the state facilitators.

Then, at the end, I approached them to ask why they did not address the Medicaid and Medicare fraud in Michigan when HHS OIG and DOJ had to partner up and journey up here to try and stop the rampant health care fraud that the Attorney General Medicaid Fraud Control Unit does nothing about.

I was rushed to the side, with whispers in my ear did they tell me that "fraud" was something they intentionally did not discuss in public.

Assholes.

Integrating Care for People Eligible for Both Medicare and Medicaid Dear Ms. Tran, Thank you for your interest in Michigan Department of Community Health's Integrated Care planning process. We received a very high response to our call for stakeholders to participate in the work group process. Nearly 500 people indicated their interest in work group participation while each of the four work groups was slated to have no more than 35 members. This required us to make some difficult choices as we strived to ensure diverse representation on each of the groups. While you were not selected to participate as a work group member, we encourage you to visit  https://janus.pscinc.com/dualeligibles to review work group meeting agendas and summaries as they become available. Meeting schedules will also be posted to the site. Work group meetings, including the meeting of all members scheduled for November 9, are open to observation by non-work group members, although space is limited. The all-member meeting will be held on November 9 from 1:00 to 3:30 PM at the Causeway Bay Lansing (6820 South Cedar Street, Lansing, MI  48911). If you are planning to attend the November 9 meeting as an observer, please use the following link to register. Please register by 5:00 this Friday, November 4. Register Now! I can't make it If you would like to listen in to the meeting by phone, you may use the following call-in information. Phone number: (877) 668-4490 Access code: 20005550# This call-in information will remain in effect for all future work group meetings. Please be aware that phone participation is limited to 500 people. Thank you again for your interest. You are always welcome to submit comments regarding the integrated care model to integratedcare@michigan.gov. Work group meeting materials, including agendas, summaries, and background materials will be made available at https://janus.pscinc.com/dualeligibles as they become available. Sincerely, Stephen Fitton, Director Medical Services Administration Michigan Department of Community Health

A Case Of Waste In Child Welfare

Here is a classic example of waste in child welfare.

Hawaii Couple's Daughter Taken Away for 18 Hours Over Alleged Sandwich Theft

A Hawaii couple’s 3-year-old daughter was taken away from them for 18 hours after they were arrested for forgetting to a pay for two $5 sandwiches.

"This is unreal this could happen to a family like ours," Nicole Leszczynski told Hawaii’s KHON.

The outing-turned-nightmare happened Wednesday while the family was shopping at a local Safeway.

"We walked a long way to the grocery store and I was feeling faint, dizzy, like I needed to eat something so we decided to pick up some sandwiches and eat them while we were shopping," Leszczynski told the news station.

Leszczynski, who is 30-weeks pregnant, her husband, Marcin, and daughter Zophia bought $50 worth of groceries -- but forgot about their two chicken salad sandwiches. Read more: 


Let us perform a basic cost analysis here.


Portion of propaganda training for manager to call child protective services:  $200


Police intervention in dealing with child (dispatch operator, two officers, transport, desk paperwork): $1000


CPS worker, supervisor, case manager, foster care worker, placement of child and paperwork: $1000


Court (judge, clerks, court officer, attorney for child, prosecutor, paperwork): $2000


Continuing case investigation as woman is pregnant: $5000


Miscellaneous service costs: $800


Estimated waste over $5 dollars: $10,000


Estimated post traumatic expense of child: priceless


And people wonder why the country has a deficit.

Study Shows Private Contractors Usually Cost More than Public Employees

Just think what would have been found if the report had access to data for child welfare services contracts of states.

Woooweee!  Talk about waste, fraud and abuse.

Study Shows Private Contractors Usually Cost More than Public Employees

Posted on September 27, 2011

Conventional wisdom in Washington dictates that the private sector can always provide services at a lower cost than the federal government. A new study from the Project On Government Oversight (POGO), however, turns conventional wisdom on its head, demonstrating that the government rarely reaps the purported benefits of lower costs through the outsourcing of service work. In fact, POGO found that, on average, the government pays service contractors more than 1.8 times the amount it pays federal employees with the same education, doing the same job and performing similar tasks.

From the beginning of the Republic, politicians have debated about the size of government. As the federal government became a larger, more expansive social welfare institution, President Dwight Eisenhower became the first modern president to establish a policy of outsourcing federal services if a commercial equivalent was available for less.

In the 1980s, President Ronald Reagan, guided by his conservative ideology, expanded the outsourcing of government services. The approach reached its zenith with the "yellow pages test," prescribing that the government contract out any service found in the phone book. Since the Reagan administration, Republican and Democratic presidents alike have promised to reduce duplication and inefficiencies in government, which is often code for reducing the size of the federal workforce.

As the total U.S. population has grown, the number of federal civilian workers as a share of the population has declined. However, since work still needs to be done, the government has turned to contractors to perform public work, creating an expensive and expanding "shadow government." POGO notes that the size of the federal workforce has remained relatively constant over the last decade at about 2.5 million, but "the contractor workforce has increased ... from an estimated 4.4 million to 7.6 million in 2005." Additionally, the government now spends over $320 billion on service contracts annually, representing roughly one-quarter of all discretionary spending.

Conservatives have argued that "privatizing" public sector work will save costs because of the "overgenerous" pay and "lavish" benefits of public employees. This argument, as POGO indicates, relies "on the theory that the government pays [prevailing] private sector compensation rates when it outsources services."

As POGO's study reveals, this is rarely the case. Rather, service contractors charge more than twice the going private sector compensation rate for comparable tasks; to be more specific, private contractors are, on average, paid more than 1.8 times the amount the federal government pays its own employees to perform similar functions.

POGO's study examined 35 different occupational classifications and compared the "full costs of federal employee annual compensation" with the "average annual contractor billing rates" for those tasks. In 33 out of the 35 classifications, service contractors charged more than it would cost for the federal government to perform the task in-house; in the most egregious examples, service contractors charged more than three times the cost of a federal employee to perform a similar task in one case and almost five times as much in another. In over a third of the jobs studied, service contractors charged the government more than twice what federal employees earned to perform similar work.

The occupational classifications span routine services like grounds keeping and quality assurance to functions like budget analysis and language specialization – "frequently used to perform intelligence functions" – that can fall between legitimate work the government can outsource and inherently governmental tasks that only a federal employee should perform.

POGO limited its investigation to the General Service Administration's (GSA) 35 occupational classifications because the federal government does not provide accurate data on "contractor employees who perform government functions at a particular department or agency at any given time."

POGO calls on Congress to require federal agencies to use a standard coding system when awarding contracts, "the collection, reporting, and oversight of life-cycle costs associated with government services," and "greater transparency and improved pricing on GSA Schedule service contracts." Lack of transparency will continue to limit the ability of the government and the public to determine how much money the government saves or wastes through outsourcing, or to correct any excessive costs incurred. However, the report does not make the case that the federal government should never utilize contractors to perform the examined functions. POGO's investigation simply found that on average, federal employees perform the vast majority of the given tasks for less than a comparable contractor employee.

In addition to collecting and reporting lifecycle costs and greater accuracy and transparency of service contractor numbers, Congress should eventually require the posting of all federal contracts online – with appropriate redactions of any proprietary information – and the creation of a more accessible Federal Awardee Performance and Integrity Information System (FAPIIS), which provides contractor performance information. While the cost of contractor services and the raw numbers of contractors are important to determining whether the government is getting value for its dollars, the public deserves a full accounting of what contractors are getting paid and how they perform.

This is particularly true today, as the nation debates how to reduce government spending. Members of the Super Committee should think about reducing the amount spent on service contracts before considering funding cuts for important public programs that help keep Americans safe and healthy, like food inspection, child nutrition, and low-income housing.

Bad Business: Billions of Taxpayer Dollars Wasted on Hiring Contractors

White House Launches Campaign To End Fraud, Waste and Abuse

Isn't this lovely.  The White House wants to root out fraud, waste and abuse.  Vice President Joe Biden is now calling himself "Sheriff Joe".

Well, I call myself "The Whistleblower Goddess" and I say everyone, report the billions in fraud waste and abuse of Medicaid in child welfare.


It's time to tell the public.

	Good morning, Did you know that the government spends millions to maintain buildings that have sat vacant for years? Or that your tax dollars pay to needlessly ship copies of the Federal Register to thousands of government offices across the country even though the same information is available online? And I bet you didn't know that your tax dollars pay for a website dedicated to the Desert Tortoise. I'm sure it's a wonderful species, but we can't afford to have a standalone site devoted to every member of the animal kingdom. It's just one of hundreds of government websites that should be consolidated or eliminated. This kind of waste is just unacceptable. Particularly at a time when we’re facing tough decisions about reducing our deficit, it's a no-brainer to stop spending taxpayer dollars on things that benefit nobody. That’s why President Obama asked me to head up the Campaign to Cut Waste—a new effort to root out wasteful spending at every agency and department in the Federal Government. Like millions of American families, the Federal Government has to take a hard look at spending and live within its means. Most of these cuts we’re going to make are small. They won’t close our deficit or solve all of our fiscal problems. However, no amount of waste is acceptable, and these cuts will add up over time. This year alone we’ve found $33 billion in savings, but we know there’s a lot more work to be done. When we passed the Recovery Act back in 2009, President Obama insisted that we use that program to set a new standard in government transparency and accountability. And he appointed me as “Sheriff Joe” to make sure the job gets done. Now, there were a lot of naysayers back then who said that there was no way we could implement the Recovery Act without massive waste, fraud and abuse. You know what? They were wrong. Thanks to our diligence (and some help from advanced computer models and sophisticated data analysis), the Recovery Act has had an unprecedentedly low level of fraud, with less than 0.6% of all awards experiencing any waste or abuse. There’s absolutely no reason why we can’t apply these same principles and techniques to all government spending. And that’s exactly what I intend to do with the help of a new Government Accountability and Transparency Board, a group composed of independent inspectors general and high-level agency officials who will help me root out waste, fraud and abuse across the government. Helping me ensure that your tax dollars are being spent on things that matter, like investments in education, innovation and improving our infrastructure. So, folks, we’re changing the way your government does business (and spends your hard-earned tax dollars), and I think you’re going to like the results. Sincerely, Vice President Joe Biden P.S. If you’re interested in keeping up with our progress in hunting down wasteful spending, you can sign up for regular email updates.

National Adoption Day Announcement
For some reason, it will not allow me to embed this video.  Interesting...

HHS Health Care Fraud Prevention Summit In Detroit

I will be there and I am exposing the hundreds of billions of dollars in Medicaid fraud in child welfare.

HHS Secretary Sebelius, U.S. Attorney General Holder to Participate in Fifth Regional Health Care Fraud Prevention Summit in Detroit, Michigan

Federal, state, and local partners gather for summit to discuss fraud prevention efforts

WASHINGTON – On Tuesday, March 15^th U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder will deliver remarks at the fifth in a series of summits bringing together a wide-array of federal, state, and local partners, beneficiaries, providers, and other interested parties to discuss innovative ways to eliminate fraud within the U.S. health care system. The summit will include educational panels featuring law enforcement officials, consumer experts, providers, and key government agencies. Immediately following their remarks the Secretary and Attorney General will participate in a media availability.

On June 8, 2010, President Obama announced as part of a multi-faceted effort to crack down on Medicare fraud, a nationwide series of health care fraud prevention summits hosted by the Departments of Justice and Health and Human Services. Summits have already taken place in Miami, Los Angeles, Boston, and New York City.

WHO: Kathleen Sebelius, Secretary, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services

Eric Holder, U.S. Attorney General

WHEN: Tuesday, March 15, 2011

Summit: 9:00 a.m. – 12:30 p.m.

Sebelius/Holder Remarks: 11:45 a.m. EST

WHERE: Wayne State University

Community Arts Center

450 Reuther Mall
Detroit MI, 48202

NOTE:  All media must present government-issued photo I.D. (such as a driver’s license) as well as valid media credentials.

Wanna See A Classic Medicaid Fraud Scheme In Child Welfare?

Anyone want to see a classic Medicaid fraud scheme in child welfare?  Well, here it is.

Now, who, besides me is going to do something about drugging these kids??

It's not going to be the GAO.  How do I know?  I called.  Not so long ago, the GAO put out a call for information on the psychotropic drugging of foster kids.  Unfortunately, the contact information was corrupt.

When I got a hold of the Director of the engagement, he told me that, due to confidentiality laws, the GAO could not take public information.

Naturally, I asked how they were going to conduct the investigation.  I was informed that they were going to use information and data provided by the states.

Ok, after I got up from the floor from laughing my ass off, (proverbially speaking), I inquired as to whom they were going to verify the information and data, relevant to being suspect.

I really did not get a cogent response.

So, without further adieu, I present to the public, another drugging foster kids, Medicaid fraud racket:

New York State Administration for Chiidren's Services Suit Against New York to Revise Foster Treatment

HHS Inspector General Testimony On Medicaid Fraud

Testimony of Inspector General Levinson before the United States Senate Committee on Homeland Security & G...

HHS OIG Testimony of Gerald Roy

Deputy Inspector General for Investigations before the House Energy & Commerce Committee on Waste, Fraud an...

HHS OIG Testimony of Omar Perez

Special Agent with the Office of Inspector General before the before the House Energy & Commerce Committee ...

HHS OIG Testimony on Health Care Fraud

Testimony of Daniel R. Levinson, Inspector General before the United States Senate Committee on Finance Hea...

Make Me The National Child Welfare Commissioner

For those scratching your heads, asking of what relevance does a military report have to do with child welfare, allow me to opportunity to put you out of your misery.

When reading this document, just replace "military/defense operations" with "child welfare services" and "Iraq and Afghanistan" with "United States".  Here is a sample of how it will work:

Federal reliance on contractors to support child welfare services and child protection missions during contingency operations stands at unprecedented levels.  Over the course of the past nine years, contractors have at times exceeded the number of foster care children in United States.

Total spending through contracts is correspondingly large.   While there is no central federal source for definitive data on contracts and grants regarding contingency operations, the Commissioner's conservative estimate is that since October 2001, at least $177 billion has been obligated on contracts and grants to support child welfare services in the United States.

Given the magnitude of the mission to protect children and money at risk, losses from waste, fraud and abuse represent a significant cost.  While the impact on the mission cannot be readily quantified,  misspent dollars runs into the tens of billions.

 

Make me the National Child Welfare Commissioner.

Billions Wasted on Contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan

Staff Watches Over Empty Juvenile Detention Facility

BARBARA NEVINS TAYLOR

MYFOXNY.COM - Tryon Detention Center is like a poster-child for government waste. It is a juvenile detention center in New York without any juveniles. When Fox 5 was there in October, state employees were still collecting salaries.

The sprawling campus north of Albany is empty except for 25 to 30 staffers. Each employee collects almost $90,000 a year with benefits.

The state tried to shut Tryon down. It moved young people to other facilities. But the New York law requiring union members at juvenile detention centers and prisons to get a year's notice kept it open. Now the empty detention center costs taxpayers $3 million year.

There are other staffing concerns. Only 661 juveniles are in the state system, and yet 2,134 state employees watch over them. The cost is huge: $228,000 a year to keep a kid in a secure facility and $298,000 in a non-secure facility. Cities and counties pay half.

Vincent Schiraldi, the New York City probation commissioner, said that the half-empty and empty facilities throughout New York are bleeding taxpayers dry. Schiraldi has been trying to reduce the cost.

Fox 5 learned the city just filed a lawsuit against the state. The lawsuit claims the state is overcharging the city and counties throughout the state for services that it is not really providing by charging the localities for empty facilities.

While the city sues, pressure exists on the Legislature to change the law requiring 12 months' notice. Sources said that there is a push to get the legislation on the agenda for the upcoming special session. 
 

 20th Anniversary of the Child Care and Development Block Grant

Photos by Chris Smith

20th Anniversary of the Child Care and Development Block Grant

Washington, DC

October 19, 2010

Thank you, David, for that nice introduction.   I’m pleased to be here 

to help celebrate 20 years of the Child Care and Development Block Grant.  

Before I begin, I want to recognize some of the longstanding champions of 

families and children who worked so hard to see this program enacted. 

Marion Wright Edelman could not be here today, but her work as the 

founder and president of the Children’s Defense Fund put child 

care on the national agenda. 

She had help from many great leaders including some who are 

here today like Helen Blank, Barbara Willer, and Abby Cohen.

Finally, I want to welcome the state and tribal child care administrators 

from across the country and everyone here this morning who works every 

day to improve child care in America.

Thanks to all of you, we’ve come a long way in the last 20 years.

I’ve seen this progress firsthand.  When I was first elected to the 

Kansas state legislature in 1986, many people hadn’t come to 

terms with the fact that most women were working outside the home – 

even though two-thirds of mothers were in the workforce, including me.  

Back then, there weren’t many women in state capitals or the U.S. 

Congress who could make the case for child care from personal experience. 

And the men in charge typically didn’t think much of so-called “women’s 

issues” like child care.

To them, child care wasn’t an employment issue like a 40-hour week or 

a pension. It was “babysitting.”  

And they thought babysitting was something “anyone” could do. 

They didn’t see the need for a trained provider or a low staff-child

 ratio. They thought serious health and safety standards were unnecessary.  

They didn’t understand why a child care provider needed a living wage.  

Some of them would have been fine sitting every child in America in 

front of a TV and stopping there.

But there were also women and men who believed children’s 

development was crucial.  And they believed that if you cared about 

child development, you needed to care about the quality of the environment 

where they spent time every day.

They knew that if we wanted children to develop emotionally and cognitively 

and grow up to become engaged citizens and productive workers, we needed 

to engage and nurture them during their early years.

And with their support, leaders in Congress like Senators Dodd, Hatch, and 

Kennedy worked in a bipartisan effort to make the Child Care and 

Development Block Grant a reality.

Over the years, the Child Care and Development Block Grant has supported 

child care for millions of low-income children.  It focused states, tribes, 

and territories’ attention on protecting children’s health and 

safety.  It provided dedicated resources to promote quality.  

As time has passed, we’ve learned that investing in the healthy 

development of our children is one of the best

investments we can make. Study after study has shown that 

children in high quality early learning and 

development programs have a solid foundation for success in 

school and life. 

The President and First Lady understand the importance of these early years.

That’s why over the last two years, we’ve undertaken an ambitious agenda 

to give our children a better start in life.

The reauthorization of the Children’s Health Insurance Program helped us 

sign up 2.6 million previously uninsured children for CHIP and Medicaid 

last year and made coverage available to more than 4 million additional children.  

The Recovery Act is investing over $4 billion in child care and early learning 

and supporting an estimated 220,000 child care slots to help families through 

the recession. 

The First Lady’s Let’s Move Campaign has set a goal of ending childhood 

obesity within a generation. 

The Affordable Care Act prohibits new plans from denying children 

coverage because of their preexisting medical conditions and requires 

them to cover the preventive treatments, screenings, and immunizations 

recommended by the American Academy of Pediatrics.

And the President’s 2011 budget doubles the Child and Dependent Care 

Tax Credit for middle-class families, expands affordable, high-quality child 

care services for military families at centers in the U.S. and overseas, 

and increases funding for the Child Care and Development Fund by $1.6 billion.

Combined, these reforms and investments will provide critical support for 

children and families across the country.

But while resources are important, our focus goes well beyond dollars. 

Our vision is that all children should have access to affordable, 

high-quality early care and education that meets their educational, 

emotional, and developmental needs and helps prepare them for success 

in school and life.

Families aren’t one-size-fits-all and their child care and early education 

needs aren’t either. But whether children are supported by a subsidy or 

their parents pay for care out of pocket; whether they’re in a child 

care center, Head Start, a family child-care home, or a school; whether 

they need full-time care or part-day preschool – every one of them needs 

a high quality program.

Many of our children are already in high-quality programs that give them 

the nurturing and skills they need.  

But too many others are in programs that don’t meet the high standards 

for quality care.

That’s why we’ve undertaken an aggressive agenda to improve quality 

in Head Start.  These quality objectives are clearly expressed in the new 

proposed Head Start regulations we just released.  We believe that if a Head 

Start program doesn’t get results, it should have to reapply for grant money, 

whether it’s run by a nonprofit, a city, or a school district.  And we hope 

many of you will comment on this proposed rule, so we can make it 

as effective and fair as possible.

When it comes to child care, we need to keep that same focus on quality 

and effectiveness.

As you all know, the Child Care and Development Block Grant is due 

to be reauthorized.  If Congress takes up a reauthorization bill, it could 

provide an important opportunity to address health and safety requirements in 

child care, take overdue steps to improve quality standards, support the child 

care workforce, and reinforce our efforts to fight waste and fraud.

The 1.6 million children who get help from Child Care and Development Block 

Grant would benefit, and so would the over 10 million other children in child care.

But we can’t wait for a new law to pass.  In our department, we’re already 

moving ahead.

We’re helping states establish Quality Rating Improvement Systems that will 

give parents information about the quality of their child’s setting, 

and give providers information about best practices. 

We’re supporting improved workforce training.  Whether it’s the center 

director or a caregiver who is rocking your infant to sleep, skilled providers 

make all the difference when it comes to high quality care.

We’re asking states to measure their progress improving child care health 

and safety standards, early learning curricula, and provider training.  

Just as hospitals have reported for years on what they’re doing to 

meet quality benchmarks in Medicare and Medicaid, now states 

will report on their progress to improve child care every year. 

We’re also strengthening coordination across government. 

In August, Education Secretary Duncan and I launched an Interagency 

Policy Board so we can coordinate programs that we administer in 

our department like Head Start, Home Visiting, and the Child Care and 

Development Block Grant with Department of Education programs like 

preschool and infant-toddler special education.

We’ve joined forces with the Department of Defense to raise the quality 

of community child care programs that serve military families.  

This will bring high quality child care programs to neighborhoods across the 

country.

And we’ve already awarded Recovery Act funds to 45 states, DC, and 

territories, to establish early childhood education Advisory Councils.  

These councils are charged with creating one seamless early childhood system 

so Head Start, pre-K, and child care programs all work at the same high 

level—for example, in instruction, professional development, or 

identifying whether a child has special needs.

Finally, we’ve launched a new initiative, the Early Learning Communities, 

which documents and promotes the best ways to create uninterrupted 

services from before birth through age eight, track children’s well-being,

constantly improve quality, and make sure these steps carry forward 

when children start school.

We are committed to weaving together our programs into a seamless, 

high-quality early learning and development system, where every family 

can choose the setting that works best for their children and no 

family has to compromise on quality.

Just as high schools aim to prepare students for college, early childhood 

development programs should be designed with an eye towards the skills 

our children will need to succeed in their next step in life.  Quality 

child care is essential to helping our children succeed and to keeping 

our country competitive.

I look forward to working with Congress, states, parents, teachers, 

providers, and all of you to strengthen the Child Care and Development 

Block Grant and improve child across the country.  We’ve learned a lot in the 

last decades, and I’m committed to building on those successes and ensuring 

that the next decades are ones where we build brighter futures for all of our children.

Thank you.  And now, Joan, I’ll turn the program over to you.