Rochelle Chronister leaves her job as secretary of the Department of Social and Rehabilitation Services on Oct. 1. Chronister spent an hour Thursday with the Journal-World, reflecting on her 4 1/2 years at SRS.
"First of all, what in the world caused you to take this job, arguably the most thankless in state government?"
"The governor asked me to, and I told him no; in fact, I told him no on two or three occasions. But then as I thought about the fact that I probably wasn't going to run for re-election and the fact that there were a lot of things I felt could be done at SRS " and then I talked to my husband (Dr. Bert Chronister, Neodesha) about it and he said to me, 'Do you believe you can make a difference?' and then I said, 'Yes, I believe I can.' And then he said, 'Then you ought to do it.'"
What were your impressions coming in to the job and, now, going out?
"I was concerned coming in that communication within the agency was not very good. We had people who had expertise in one area that could have been used in another area, but they didn't talk well to each other. The way I've described in the past is: It was like they were in silos. It was hard for them to work together.
"I also found the agency was pretty hidebound. There weren't many advocates for change.
"There were changes that took place, but the people were afraid of change. We had to open them up to new ideas.
"And now, when I leave, I think the agency is open to change and people understand what it is they need to do to continue to move forward."
What's the official story behind SRS' adopting the mission statement: "To protect children and promote adult self-sufficiency'?
"It wasn't long after I came on and we were meeting with a lot of the midlevel managers from around the state, and they'd been working on a mission statement for the agency. And, frankly, it was already 250 words or more.
"So, finally, I just said, 'I can't remember all this. It's too long, it's too complicated.' I hated to say that because they'd worked very hard on it, but they'd wordsmithed it to death. So I said 'What do we do? We protect kids and we try help adults go to work.'
"And then George Vega (SRS director of human resources) said, 'I think you just gave us a new mission statement.' It stuck."
Your administration presided over the closings of Topeka State Hospital, one of the state's three hospitals for the mentally ill, and Winfield State Hospital and Training Center, one of the three hospitals for the mentally retarded. How long before we're looking at closing another hospital?
"We've made (institutionalization) matter of choice. There are so many families, particularly in the developmental disabilities area of mental retardation, that have seen the success of people with severe disabilities living in the community, " more and more of them saying, 'That's what I want for my family member, also.'
"So I think in the developmental disabilities area " we could see closure of one or maybe even both DD hospitals (Parsons State Hospital and Kansas Neurological Institute, Topeka)."
How soon?
"I don't want to say 'next year' because I don't want people to get panicky, but I foresee a second DD hospital closing within the next two years.
"We've told families they have a choice in what it is they want to do, and we've told them we will support them if they want to keep their family member in the community. The real preference, I think, for families is to keep them in community if they possibly can manage.
"I don't think closure is as liable to happen with the hospitals for the mentally ill. I think Larned State Hospital will always be there because of the difficulty in keeping (mental health) professionals in western Kansas. That will force Larned to stay open and, I don't know, eastern Kansas may insist on keeping Osawatomie (State Hospital) open.
"My crystal ball says some day there might not be a DD hospital; I'm not so sure on the mental health side."
Shortly after taking office, you transferred much of SRS' role in caring for the elderly to the Department of Aging. This was an enormous shift in resources. And yet, among legislators anyway, it's hardly ever mentioned. There's been little or no controversy. Why is that?
"People believed it was the best thing to do. Up to that time, the reason for the separation was income. That didn't make a whole lot of sense. You ought to be able to serve people all in one spot, no matter what their income level is. You ought to offer them the same services and those services ought to be based on level of disability. And if they can help pay, then I believe they should, most definitely.
"So, it was something that made sense."
From your perspective as a former legislator and as a soon-to-be-former welfare secretary, how do you come to grips with welfare reform and the whole notion of limiting a person's access to public assistance to 60 months?
"You come to grips with it by believing that work is valuable to people. " We found that the vast majority of people on public assistance wanted to work; they just didn't know how to get there. There were barriers.
"Many of them are victims of domestic violence -- they didn't believe they could work; they didn't have faith in themselves. (Before welfare reform) we encouraged them to work, but we didn't say to them, 'You have to go to work.'
"Welfare reform instilled a sense of urgency in people. It says, 'You have to go to work. These are good economic times in Kansas. We can help you get a job; we can get you off of public assistance.'"
What is your response to concerns that welfare reform is fine as long as the economy is strong, but that we will be in a terrible fix if -- and when -- the economy sours?
"Well, where would they be if they hadn't gone to work? They'd be in a whole lot worse shape to start with.
"If we come to a time when everybody is going on public assistance and they don't know how to get off, then we haven't made much progress -- not if they're sitting back and saying, 'I'm a victim' instead of taking control of their lives.
"You know, in a lot of ways, I think we went about this backward. (Before welfare reform) we sent people to school, we sent some to college and community college, " and we wound up with some of longest-term people on welfare having higher educations than people who'd been on for a short time and got off. So what we need to do is get them into the work mode first and then talk to them about how to get off that bottom-rung job.
"I think we've been extremely successful in putting people to work, which is what we were asked to do. But the people who didn't want welfare reform in the first place are now saying, 'Oh, no. This is failure because these people are still in poverty.' Well, that's not what we were asked to do, and I think you'll find that we were very willing to work on helping people take that next step up the ladder."
Your critics also accuse you of putting the best possible spin on the dramatic drop in the numbers of people on public assistance. You say it's because people are better off; they say, no, the poor are still poor -- they're just not on welfare, which means they are, in fact, worse off. And this is unconscionable, they say, when you realize that two-thirds of the people on public assistance are children. Your response?
"If the question is, 'Do I believe we ought to be helping people move out of poverty?' " Of course I do. But the fact of the matter is that many, many people, once they're no longer receiving cash assistance, don't want anything more to do with us. " They think we interfere with their lives ,and they're right, we do.
"But there are things to help them move up the ladder -- the earned income tax credit, day care assistance, access to a medical card (Medicaid) for a year and HealthWave (state-administered health insurance for children).
"So they are better off. They're not out of poverty, but they're starting to make that move. But you know, if you stay on welfare, you're never going to get out of poverty."
Who came up with the idea to privatize or contract for just about all the state's services for troubled children?
"Uh, that's mine. " It had been recommended through some of the SRS post audits in the past. " I'll be honest, I don't remember the specifics of those audits, but the point was the system was in trouble and probably a way to help was to privatize some of the services."
What is it that privatization brings to the table that the state couldn't do on its own?
"Resources. We would never have been able to get the resources that we needed. And we needed people.
"It's real simple, the Legislature never would have put up the money to hire the additional people. I think you could talk them into the money part of it, but you can't talk them in to the people because of the whole expansion-of-government thing."
Now that we're almost three years into the contracts, what do you see that was done right the first time and what would you change if you had it to do over again?
"The whole concept is a correct concept. It is data-driven and outcomes-based. It's 24 hours a day, seven days a week. It's focused on the safety of children and their reaching permanent homes as quickly as possible. These are all solid concepts that allow social workers the time to do the upfront investigations (of reports of abuse and neglect) that, frankly, we weren't doing as we should have.
"If we had it to do over, we wouldn't try to do it so quickly. We probably wouldn't hand over 731 children in the adoption contract in one day. I know that for sure.
"But the biggest thing would be to make sure that the judicial system, the county and district attorneys, and law enforcement understood what we were trying to do and why we were trying to do it. That was the single biggest error we made."
So, was that just a bonehead move? Because, now, it seems so obvious. The judicial system has to be on board or there's no way this is going to work.
"Well (laughing), that's 20/20 hindsight. The truth is I think we were so busy trying to figure out how this was going to work " I mean, nobody else had done this before; there wasn't anybody there to tell us where the obvious snags were. We knew we hadn't talked to the judges and the others, but I don't think any of us realized how big a problem that was.
"It's not like we forgot them, it's more like we thought we could catch them up quicker than we could " and then we couldn't."
Before privatization, SRS was the sole bureaucracy in charge of foster care. Now we have four bureaucracies: SRS, Kaw Valley, KCSL and Youthville. There used to be about 4,200 kids in out-of-home placements, costing us around $65 million. At the end of fiscal 1999, there were 4,600 kids in the system and the budget topped $100 million.
How do you justify that?
"The resources were not there to do the job. That's the short answer."
So do you ever find yourself wondering, 'Well, gee, we wouldn't have had to go through all this if we had just put $100 million into the state-run system.'"
"I've heard that argument, but the political reality is we never would have achieved those resources. And the other part of that political reality is it used to be SRS, an occasional reporter and maybe a post audit or two that paid attention to these issues. Now, there's a much higher focus. The whole issue of child abuse and how we treat children has been elevated in this state " (pause) " and that was deliberate."
"This is the only way to get the resources we need."
As secretary, what do you consider to be your greatest accomplishment? Your greatest disappointment?
"The greatest accomplishment is that kids are safer. My greatest disappointment is that I couldn't convince the Legislature to give us enough time to bring the (privatized foster care) system up before they started evaluating it. Three days after we got it up, they wanted to evaluate the whole thing.
"In the 1980s I helped write most of the economic development legislation for this state. There was an agreement that we would not get into evaluating it for five years, and we didn't. Were there a lot of problems in the meantime? You bet there were. But there wasn't anybody over there beating up on them every day.
"We didn't have foster care up a month and they (the Legislature) wanted to send in Post Audit for a new audit on the whole thing. That's unfair."
What are your comments on the irony that you, a nonsocial worker who'd never been part of a bureaucracy and who presided over so much change, are being replaced by Janet Schalansky, who's been part of the SRS bureaucracy for almost 25 years. Seems like we're going from an outsider to an insider.
"There's never been an insider. Janet is the first person who's been working for SRS to ever head this agency. It gives her a tremendous heads-up on what the strengths and weaknesses are in this agency. She will be able to make the further changes that have to be made.
"Change does not stop because Rochelle Chronister leaves. If it does, I failed."
Now that you're no longer secretary, what are your plans?
"I'm becoming an RV (recreational vehicle) driver. I leave for the Northeast -- Boston, Vermont, New Hampshire -- the day after I hang up my secretary robe " or maybe it's my dunce hat (laughs)."
If asked, would you accept an appointment to the Kansas Board of Regents? Is that something you're interested in?
"Yeah, I'm interested in the board, I've always been interested in education. I'm also interested in the KU Medical Center board. I was asked today if I would be interested in being on a foundation board -- and I would be.
"But, you know, I want to just 'veg out' for a while. I put it this way: Today, 6,500 people report to me; in a week and a half, nobody is going to report to me. When we hit the road, I'm just going to be Rochelle again."
-- Dave Ranney's phone message number is 832-7222. His e-mail is dranney@ljworld.com.
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