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.

(NBC Affiliate) More than one out of ten Alaska households has trouble feeding the family. That's one suggestion made by a new report by the advocacy group the Food Research and Action Center.

Newscenter 11’s Seth Linden explains from Washington:

For many families, dining together may be a given. It's assumed food will be on the table. But for other families in Alaska, regular meals are a false assumption.