Communications & Workforce Technology

STATE OF ALASKA
EXECUTIVE PROCLAMATION
By Frank Murkowski, Governor

Alaskans in need depend upon the State to provide them assistance in the form of cash, food, medical, heat, and employment services to transition those who are able to achieve self sufficiency. The State, in turn, depends upon its employees in the Divisions of Public Assistance, Health Care Services, and Senior and Disabilities Services, as well as their partnering agencies to get the job done. While many of these individuals – case managers, supportive service workers, supervisors, administrative support personnel, employment specialists, and others – do not identify themselves as public assistance workers, they are, nevertheless, an important part of the team.

WASHINGTON -- As a hospice care worker, Aniya Witherspoon says her goal each day is to bring joy to people living out their final days.

"If I can make them smile, then I've done my job," said the certified nursing assistant and mother of two who lives in Charleston, W.Va.

To do her job, Witherspoon relies on the government to help pay for child care.

She now pays $4 a day. Without that federal assistance, her daily bill would run $36. And she only makes $64 each day.

Our first star can be described best as tireless visionary, motivator, and mentor with seemingly unending energy who is committed to excellence. She has been with us over 20 years and has given her heart and soul to our division in a wide variety of roles including: eligibility, system operations, training and leadership. She is described by co-workers, partners and friends as one of the best motivators and leaders in State or Federal government.This Superstar has a tenacity that is infectious.

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.”

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.

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.

This page is devoted to listing resources available to people who are in need of a variety of services and for those who do not qualify for either the Chronic and Acute Medical Assistance program or the Medicaid program.

Division of Health Care Services - Beyond Medicaid and CAMA

Funded by NIH grant, College of Pharmacy researchers show welfare recipients benefit from 'work therapy'

HOUSTON, Nov. 30, 2004 – It's said that "idle hands are the devil's workshop." A pair of University of Houston professors studying employment and drug use now provide support for that proverb. Led by Isaac D. Montoya, clinical professor at the UH College of Pharmacy, this National Institutes of Health (NIH) study found that employment reduces the chronic drug use of female welfare recipients.

University Park, Pa. –- In encouraging low-income single mothers to earn a college education, federal and state governments, along with higher education institutions, will make a solid, long-term investment for the whole society, a Penn State researcher says.

Some policymakers object to using tax dollars to subsidize a college education for single mothers on partial welfare, notes Dr. Donald E. Heller, associate professor of education. They apparently believe that this discriminates against working-class, tax-paying Americans who earn an adequate wage but whose income still leaves them out of reach of a college education.