My name is Meg Snead, and I am excited and honored to now serve as Acting Secretary for the Pennsylvania Department of Human Services (DHS). I come to DHS after serving as Governor Wolf’s Secretary of Policy and Planning, but I am not new to the human services world or DHS specifically. Prior to joining the Governor’s Office, I started my commonwealth service in DHS’ policy office working on Medicaid, mental health, and substance use policy. Prior to moving home to Pennsylvania, I spent 12 years working in the nonprofit industry in Colorado on affordable housing, homelessness services, and health care policy.

I’m very excited to be back in the agency environment, and it’s an incredible privilege to be back and leading an agency for which I care so deeply. I consider myself an advocate at heart, and the work done at DHS allows me to advocate for Pennsylvanians every day, be it through direct aid and assistance or through the quality of services and care we expect in programs and facilities we oversee. Millions of people across Pennsylvania turn to DHS through difficult times or rely on our programs or services.

I’m coming into this role at an important time for Pennsylvania and for the goals DHS has worked towards since Governor Wolf took office. This is a time to fortify the work and accomplishments of the last six years so this work can continue well beyond the Governor’s tenure. Pennsylvania’s recovery from this pandemic is something that DHS will play an active role in, and I am to use this time to help the people we serve in a way that can put them on a long-term path to better health, economic stability, and an overall improved quality of life.

Additional funding from the American Rescue Plan Act presents a number of opportunities to help continue  collective recovery from this pandemic. Over the coming months DHS will provide hundreds of millions of dollars directly for people who are struggling to pay rent or utilities as a result of the pandemic. The Rescue Act also gives us the incredible opportunity to extend the Medicaid coverage period for new moms – something that can help us fight maternal mortality rates that disproportionately affect lower income women and women of color. And DHS will be able to continue support for essential industries that have been so challenged by this pandemic.

As our state and country begins to overcome this pandemic and help Pennsylvania emerge from the economic hardships, DHS will play a critical role in helping steer a recovery that prioritizes vulnerable individuals and families and affords the affiliated providers with the ability to emerge stronger. I know that I am assuming this role through a difficult period, but this has done incredible work in the last year to respond to the everchanging needs of this pandemic.

Joining me at DHS will be Andrew Barnes, who assumes the role of Executive Deputy Secretary. Andrew has been serving as the Executive Deputy Secretary in the Governor’s Policy Office since I assumed the role in 2019. Andrew comes to the position with more than 15 years of experience in the commonwealth. He previously worked in the Office of the Victim Advocate overseeing victim services and working to ensure victims’ rights are upheld and recognized through the justice process. Andrew also led policy and legislative affairs work in the Department of Corrections, working internally and in collaboration with other agencies and governing bodies to advance Pennsylvania’s justice system.

I’d like to thank Teresa Miller and Clarke Madden for their service to DHS and the commonwealth. They’ve done amazing work leading this agency over the last few years, and I’m excited to build on their success and continue working to help Pennsylvanians lead healthier, more enriching lives.

The U.S. Department of Labor announced a third round of funding for the Workforce Opportunity for Rural Communities (WORC) initiative for $29.2 million, with awards ranging from $150,000 to $1.5 million. Last year, 14 projects in the Appalachian region received more than $14.5 million.

Managed by the U.S. Department of Labor, WORC provides enhanced training and support activities to dislocated workers, new entrants in the workforce, incumbent workers, and individuals affected by substance use disorder who are returning to work in the Appalachian and Delta regions. The goal of WORC is to improve access to jobs in high-demand occupations, as well as help communities and workers plan for, and recover from, economic transitions. Successful WORC projects draw on long-term economic growth strategies, building on bottom-up, community-led plans maximizing economic resilience and regional strengths.

Learn how to apply for a WORC Initiative grant. For assistance preparing your application, check out WORC’s technical assistance pre-application workshops below.

Monday, May 17: Nuts and Bolts of the WORC Initiative
Tuesday, May 18: Managing the Grant Writing Process
Wednesday, May 19: Demonstrating Need and Strategic Alignment
Thursday, May 20: The SF-424, 424-A, and the Budget Narrative
Friday, May 21: Outputs, Outcomes, Impact, and Sustainability

Register by Friday, May 14, 2021.

The Pennsylvania Department of Human Services (DHS) recently added requirements to our Medicaid Managed Care Organizations (MCOs) to incorporate community-based organizations into their plans to advance our health care system towards value (a concept called value-based purchasing), which emphasizes results over transactional cost.

Part of the goal is to make sure that community-based organizations (CBOs) understand these changes and can effectively partner with MCOs and providers to deliver social services. This is an opportunity to better support CBOs in delivering effective social services and providing fair financial compensation for these services. The attached document provides additional information to help you understand this initiative and why your organization should learn more about it.

DHS invites you to join us for a series of four training sessions for CBOs to better understand how to get involved, the different models for these agreements and the operational aspects involved, and the requirements for CBOs. DHS is teaming up with the Center for Evidence-Based Policy (CEBP) for the trainings and they will be provided at no cost to your organization.

Webinars have a limited capacity, and all participants are required so sign up (links below). After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the webinar. You must register for each session separately.

If you have any questions, please contact Michael Hershey at c-mhershey@pa.gov

CBO Training Session 1, in a series of Four, will give an overview of Value-based Purchasing (VBP), customized for a CBO audience, focusing on the rationale and goals of transitioning from fee-for-service to MCO/provider contracts that are part of a VBP arrangement. This session would include an overview of the benefits and challenges of these partnerships and include examples of successful CBO partnerships.

Please register for PA CBO Training: Training Session #1 on Apr 28, 2021 9:00 AM EDT at:

https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/2002813620826307852

CBO Training Session 2 will give an overview of how CBOs can best align and adapt their governance and operations to support participation in an MCO and/or provider contract. The training would address a CBO readiness checklist that includes key areas of governance and organizational infrastructure, as well as a budget model that takes into account new MCO/provider revenue.

Please register for PA CBO Training: Training Session #2 on May 17, 2021 11:00 AM EDT at:

https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/3601435357891893004

CBO Training Session 3 will focus on evaluation of readiness for partnerships, as well as considerations for picking an MCO or provider organization partner and negotiating an agreement. In addition to evaluating CBO readiness to enter into a contract with an MCO or provider partner, this session will address key contract terms and related considerations for CBO contracts with MCOs and providers.

Please register for PA CBO Training: Training Session #3 on May 28, 2021 11:00 AM EDT at:

https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/3054249102678062348

CBO Training Session 4 will be a workshop-style session and we will seek to provide examples for how CBOs can plan for and implement Social Determinants of Health (SDoH) interventions that are part of a value-based purchasing arrangement between MCOs and provider organizations. The workshop will also address questions raised during the workshop session and revisit select questions from training sessions 1-3.

Please register for PA CBO Training: Training Session #4 on Jun 17, 2021 4:00 PM EDT at:

https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/2793971610639341836

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) announced a new effort funded by the American Rescue Plan to provide adequate nutrition to more than 30 million children over the summer by expanding Pandemic Electronic Benefit Transfer (P-EBT) benefits. Summer months are difficult for low-income children because they lack access to school meals that fill a nutrition gap during the school year. When school is out of session, summer feeding programs—considered a lifeline for some families—reach just a small fraction, typically less than 20%, of the number served during the school year. This summer, USDA will offer P-EBT benefits to all low-income children of all ages, helping families put food on the table during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“The expansion of P-EBT benefits over the summer is a first-of-its-kind, game-changing intervention to reduce child hunger in the United States,” said Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack. “By providing low-income families with a simple benefit over the summer months, USDA is using an evidenced-based solution to drive down hunger and ensure no child has to miss a meal.”

P-EBT was established in March 2020 to provide food dollars to families to make up for meals missed when schools have closed due to COVID-19. The program was set to expire on September 30, 2021, but through the American Rescue Plan Act, benefits are now available for the duration of the pandemic, including during the summer months.

P-EBT builds on lessons learned from USDA’s Summer EBT pilots, which began in 2011 and have proven successful at reducing severe food insecurity as well as improving the quality of children’s diets. Recent research by the Brookings Institute confirms P-EBT also has a measurable impact on food insecurity, decreasing food hardship faced by low-income children by 30% in the week following benefit issuance.

Children are eligible for this temporary nutrition benefit – loaded onto an EBT card that can then be used to purchase food – if they are eligible to receive free or reduced-price meals during the school year or if they are under age six and live in a SNAP household. Families of eligible children typically receive $6.82 per child, per weekday, or roughly $375 per child over the summer months.

“Help is here for financially stressed families trying to put food on the table,” said Stacy Dean, deputy undersecretary for USDA’s Food, Nutrition, and Consumer Services. “Our nutrition assistance programs are powerful tools that are critical to America reaching a full and equitable recovery from the pandemic.”

For more on the estimated impact of this effort broken down by state, visit www.usda.gov/sites/default/files/documents/usda-p-ebt-summer-2021.pdf (PDF, 105 KB).

Some 29 million adults and as many as 12 million children haven’t always had enough to eat throughout this pandemic. Further, food insecurity has disproportionate impacts on communities of color, with more than 1 in 5 Black and Latino adults living in food insecure households compared to 1 in 9 adults overall. However, recent data from the Census Bureau shows food insecurity among adults has fallen from 14 percent to 9 percent from December 2020 to April 2021.

The announcement today comes in addition to a variety of actions taken recently by USDA to strengthen food security, drive down hunger, and put a greater emphasis on the importance of nutrition. Just recently, USDA maximized economic relief for struggling families by taking administrative action on SNAP emergency allotments by targeting an additional $1 billion per month to roughly 25 million people. The Biden-Harris Administration’s American Rescue Plan Act provides over $12 billion in new nutrition assistance to address hardship caused by the pandemic, including:

• Extending a 15 percent increase in SNAP benefits— providing over $1.1 billion per month in additional benefits for about 41 million participants—through September 2021;
• Adding $1.1 billion in new funding for territories that operate nutrition assistance block grants—home to nearly 3 million Americans—to support those hard-hit by the pandemic;
• To help reopen schools safely in the fall and address child food insecurity, USDA issued a broad range of flexibilities that will allow schools and childcare institutions to serve healthy meals for free to all kids in the 2021-2022 school year;
• Funding meals for young adults experiencing homelessness through Child and Adult Care Food Program (CACFP) emergency shelters;
• Providing nearly $900 million for the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children (WIC), including a temporary increase in fruit and vegetable vouchers to $35 per month and an historic investment in innovation and outreach to better serve more than 6.2 million people that use WIC to support a healthy start for infants and young children.

For more information about P-EBT, please visit the P-EBT website.

Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf marked Earth Day by joining the Chesapeake Conservancy to announce a new collaborative environmental initiative for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania to restore the health of 30 agriculturally-impaired streams by 2030.

“The Pennsylvania rivers and streams that drain into the Chesapeake Bay are the backbone of many communities across the commonwealth. Restoring those rivers and streams brings back recreation opportunities like fishing and boating, and improves water quality, which helps communities downstream. This ‘30 x 30’ stream restoration effort will build on the type of work that my administration, the Chesapeake Conservancy and many others are doing every day to help Pennsylvania farmers restore streambanks, install best management practices, and continue to be stewards of the land,” Gov. Wolf said. “Restoring Pennsylvania’s waters pays dividends here in our communities and downstream, and I am proud to join this effort.”

“On behalf of the Chesapeake Conservancy and our partners, we thank Governor Wolf for his commitment to this exciting effort to restore 30 streams by 2030,” said Chesapeake Conservancy President and CEO Joel Dunn. “Partners working from Lycoming to Lancaster County have identified 30 streams where collaborative restoration can restore stream health most quickly and remove the stream from the impaired waters list. While more resources are still needed, we are already seeing tangible results in Pennsylvania’s local streams from public and private investments. The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection has been a valuable partner in helping to shape this initiative and ensuring monitoring is in place to evaluate success at key milestones.”

The “30 x 30” stream restoration initiative will support community-based efforts that are already underway to reduce pollution and sediment in Pennsylvania streams and provide healthy habitats for fish and wildlife, outdoor recreation, and better water quality for local communities. The effort directly supports agricultural landowners seeking to restore local streams near their land.

Many community partners have engaged in this effort, including the PA Departments of Environmental Protection (DEP) and Conservation and Natural Resources (DCNR), seven county conservation districts, as well as the dozens of nonprofits, research institutions, and local, federal, and state agencies involved with central PA Precision Conservation Partnership, Lancaster Clean Water Partners, and the Live Stake Collaborative.

To celebrate DEP’s and strong contributions to this community-based stream restoration effort, Governor Wolf bestowed the “Champion of the Chesapeake” award on behalf of Chesapeake Conservancy to two DEP employees, Marcus Kohl and Jason Fellon.

The award, which is Chesapeake Conservancy’s signature award celebrating conservation leadership in the Chesapeake Bay watershed, recognizes Kohl and Fellon’s longtime efforts and innovative leadership to improve the quality of Pennsylvania’s environment for the benefit of the commonwealth’s people, wildlife, and habitats. The award further recognizes the outstanding contributions of DEP as a whole to improve and to protect Pennsylvania’s environment.

“Marcus and Jason are just two examples of the exemplary work that DEP staff do day in and day out. This accolade is well deserved, and the type of work they have overseen and directed will be what achieves the ’30 x 30′ milestone,” said DEP Secretary Patrick McDonnell.

“Marcus and Jason epitomize one of the bedrock principles of my administration: Government that works. Their dedication and collaboration have led to millions of dollars in investments into clean, healthy streams, like the Turtle Creek watershed in Union County,” Gov. Wolf said. “I’m proud to acknowledge them for their roles in projects that make Pennsylvania a better place.”

Video of the governor’s remarks are available online and for download.