Father Time

There’s a growing focus in welfare policy on a long-neglected part of the problem: fatherhood.

It’s a normal weekday morning in the family courtroom at Baltimore City circuit court. The docket is crowded. First up: a man who has seven children and isn’t making his support payments to any of them. Three of the mothers are present, and they are indignant. One of them says she’s seen the man driving around in a new Jeep Cherokee “He was in the Navy,” says another. “He has a good job.”

Please join me in welcoming Margo Nash back to the Division of Public Assistance! She'll be joining the Leadership Team the first of April as the new Operations Support Manager.

Margo has been with DPA since 1975, when she began as an eligibility worker in Ketchikan. Over the years she has supported DPA in many diverse roles, including Southeast Regional Payments Manager, EIS Project Director, and Network Services Manager.

Here are this month's DPAstars.

We frequently receive letters from caregivers, recipients, and family members expressing their appreciation for this Star's work. Working out of Anchorage, he actively seeks ways to improve our service delivery and build strong teamwork. His peers have described him as: caring, sensitive, professional, knowledgeable, promptly responsive, immensely helpful, without fail respectful to clients and an outstanding public service employee personified. On a personal note he can apparently make a killer chili and love's putting together a potluck just to get his friends and team members together in the office.

Communities need to use a holistic approach to help families whose benefits are about to expire, the director of Alaska's Division of Public Assistance told members of the Matanuska-Susitna Agencies Partnership during a recent meeting at Valley Hospital Medical Center.

MAP is a group made up of individuals who work in the social services field. Nugen's Ranch, Head Start, United Way and Love Inc. are among the agencies represented.

Increase would come as lawmakers contend with surplus built up as precaution

COLUMBUS - The state is proposing the first raise in five years for families receiving welfare and other ways to spend most of the program's balance, which has surpassed what the federal government gives the state each year for welfare.

Staff with the Department of Job and Family Services were to present the agency plan to House lawmakers. The legislature must approve spending for the federal-state program as part of the state's next two-year budget that begins in July.