Pride of authorship, team decision making, site-based decision making, grass roots leadership and community-wide collaborative problem-solving are theories and techniques practiced for some time in private enterprise which are now being applied to the governmental sector. The goal of much recent government effort is to "empower" communities to render social services determined and selected by the community.

Many government services, to some extent, have always been the province of local determination, e.g., elementary and secondary education, police and fire protection, water and sewer facilities, garbage collection, and city streets and county roads, to name a few. And at one time, services to the poor and potentially impoverished juveniles were entirely a local function.

But with the advent of federally funded social welfare programs, policy making on a national level became a central government event, and administration was entrusted to states which served as operating outposts for Washington, D.C. In recent years, amid a growing frustration over the limited success of programs intended to raise all citizens to a level of economic self-sufficiency, the basic assumptions and operating features of the various programs have been subjected to intense scrutiny at local, state, and national levels. Early childhood education and health enhancement programs, juvenile intervention programs, adult education and training programs and income maintenance programs were included in the review. An outgrowth of the examination was a realization that, while well intended, many of the programs' features failed to address specific local needs, and the programs suffered from the suspicions attendant to change agents which are initiated, designed, and controlled by institutions outside the community.

As the proverbial idea whose time has arrived, Kentucky and several other states have recently initiated programs which focus social service decision making at the local level. In Kentucky, Governor Brereton C. Jones established the Kentucky Commission on Families and Children in the summer of 1994. Created by executive order, the Commission was established to provide consistent statewide planning, coordination and local decision making on behalf of families and children. The Commission recently solicited input from local human resource agencies, public and private; school districts, community action agencies, United Way groups and governmental entities on strategies for local decision making and service delivery. The suggestions will be used as the foundation for models for Kentucky's communities in serving children and families.

Several of Kentucky's communities have organized to identify local needs, streamline services, and build community-wide support for the effort. In Louisville, a community-based system of service delivery has been developed under the auspices of the Jefferson County government. Termed the "Neighborhood Place," the program emphasizes accessibility to the community, full integration of service delivery, and responsiveness to client needs.

The Neighborhood Places are located in areas of high client concentration, and feature single-point access/intake for multiple services, made possible by housing service providers under one roof, who work as teams with clients toward specific client-identified goals. The centers are supervised by community councils, made up of community members and provider representatives, who are also responsible for assessing community needs. Management Boards, comprised of managers of sponsoring organizations and representatives of community councils do implementation planning and allocate resources. A Community Services Leadership Council, whose membership is composed of key community leaders, is responsible for long-range planning, prioritizing resources and approving the budget.

In Owensboro/Daviess County, the Human Development Council—a collaborative of private and public sector providers, elected officials, service users, and community representatives—is working to build support for its vision for children and families by making the service system more efficient, effective, and responsive to the needs of the entire family. Through the creation of a community report card, this Council has established benchmarks against which future progress in achieving desired outcomes for children and families can be measured.

In the Gateway Area Development District, ten organizations (the Area Development District, District Health Department, Community Mental Health, all three local hospitals, social services and "entitlement" agencies, Morehead State University, and the University of Kentucky's College of Dentistry) have formally agreed to develop the "Gateway Region Interagency Delivery System," known as "GRIDS." A broader network to include other service providers involved in transportation, housing, job training and adult education, five county school systems, lay consumers and parents, is envisioned. The overall goal of GRIDS is to develop an integrated and collaborative delivery system with improved client access to services, improved quality in health and human services, and a decrease in overall costs.

The states of Georgia, Maryland, Oregon, and Washington have enacted legislation to empower local communities to identify, plan for, and deliver various services to children and families at risk. In Georgia, a Georgia Policy Council for Children and Families will approve plans submitted by community partnerships for addressing the problems of children, youth, and families in the county for which the community partnership was created. The partnership organizations, made up of public and private citizens, will be authorized to contract with public and private agencies to provide programs and services to carry out the provisions of the comprehensive plan.

The Maryland Subcabinet for Children, Youth, and Families Resource Fund will oversee the operations of children's councils established in each Maryland county and Baltimore City. Some of the more significant duties of the councils will be: (1) the examination of public and private programs for children, youth, and their families to identify duplications, inefficiencies, and unmet needs; (2) the review of federal, state, local, and private funds utilized and available for services and programs for children, youth, and their families; (3) the identification, documentation, and communication of needs, resources and priorities to the local governing body; and (4) the dissemination of public information on programs and services for children, youth, and their families.

The state of Washington created the Community Public Health and Safety Networks, and charged them with reducing the rate of problem areas in their community, such as teen pregnancy, substance abuse, violent criminal acts, teen suicide, and dropping out of school. The community networks, with a majority of their membership drawn from private community members, have the ability to make recommendations directly to the state funding sources as to how money should be spent in communities. While some new funds will be dedicated to the community networks, the effort is geared toward a critical examination of existing systems, resources, and bureaucracy.

The hallmark of state initiatives to empower local communities is the Oregon Commission on Children and Families Act. Adopted in 1993, the Act created a state Oregon Commission on Children and Families and local Commissions on Children and Families in each of the state's thirty-six counties. The local commissions' charge is twofold: to plan comprehensively for the wellness of all children in their county, and to engage state government in a discussion of who should be responsible for services to children and families in the county.

The Act was adopted in response to legislative concerns about fragmented and inaccessible services for children and families. It creates an opportunity for local commissions to review and design county-wide systems that serve children and families that meet identified principles in the Act. The Oregon commissions were preceded by volunteer citizen-driven local commissions begun in 1979 with the Juvenile Services Commission and expanded in 1989 with the Oregon Community Children and Youth Services Commission. These commissions worked to set local priorities and to develop local strategies to address their own unique needs. The state commission drew upon the work of the Oregon Progress Board, which developed Oregon Benchmarks, a state-wide strategic planning process that identified three broad goals for Oregon: increased jobs and incomes by creating a diversified, productive economy; protect and enhance Oregon; and invest in the capabilities of Oregonians. Specific benchmarks, 272 all together, are the measurable indicators of progress toward Oregon's goals. A significant number of benchmarks that relate to children and family issues were adopted by the state commission.

The 14-member state commission is made up of 12 appointees by the Governor, plus the State Superintendent of Public Instruction and the Director of Human Resources. The responsibilities of the state Commission include: (1) the adoption of goals and priorities for service; (2) a determination of funding that should be transferred to local commissions and a development of an equitable distribution formula; (3) a listing of children support areas that local commissions must address; (4) the review and approval or denial of local plans; (5) a determination that local services are integrated and evaluated according to outcome goals; and (6) the providing of technical assistance to local commissions to assist in the development of plans and the transferring of resources from the state to the local level.

The local commissions must have a minimum of eight members, appointed by the county governing board, with a lay citizen majority, including chair. Local commissions' responsibilities include: (1) comprehensive planning focused on outcomes adopted by the state commission, (2) the assurance of citizen participation in comprehensive planning, and (3) the conduct of an open contracting process for services rendered to children and families.

In partnership with the state commission, each of the local commissions goes through a comprehensive planning process to determine needs and priorities and plan for community action programs to serve children and youth in their communities. In addition, all counties must develop methods for monitoring and evaluating commission programs and activities. Local staff conduct periodic program monitoring and collect information for evaluation of long-term program activities.

In contrast with other states' local empowerment initiatives, including Kentucky's, Oregon's program is distinguished by: (1) state-wide coverage, (2) mandated creation of local commissions, (3) local control of programs and funds previously administered by the state, and (4) a foundation of goals and benchmarks developed through a state consensus effort. The process which led to the development of Oregon's Commissions on Families and Children may be difficult to duplicate, but its results can be copied.

The intent of the General Assembly in enacting the legislation would be to establish and maintain a "wellness model" for children and families in Kentucky; build new local resources and state local partnerships, determining which services previously managed by the state can be transferred to local commissions; and provide research, technical assistance, and training to help local communities build their capacity to plan and manage programs for children and families.

The legislation should:

The Commission on Poverty believes that the state Commission on Children and Families should play a significant role in the allocation of federal block grants identified for services to children and families, and recommends that any legislation specifying a process for the allocation of block grants should include the state Commission on Children and Families.