Oklahoma City—A deadly fight at an Oklahoma correctional facility this week is shining new light on continuing problems inherent in the state’s prison system.

Oklahoma’s Department of Human Services recently received an incentive payment of more than $600,000 from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Administration for finding new, permanent families for state children leaving foster care.

Over the past few weeks, OPEA has collected information from DHS workers about the work they do and how the increasing caseloads and high turnover has affected the services they provide and their families. The stories tell of workers who stand between the working poor and despair, who rescue abused children and rock them to sleep, who help the elderly left behind by mobile families, and bring dignity to the disabled in homes or in facilities. They are keeping the promise for the citizens of Oklahoma that we will be a compassionate people. Where is the promise to them that they can have adequate pay for a long day, and often night, of work and care for their families?

In the first of three press conferences dealing with the crisis in pay and staffing in state services, OPEA takes the correctional issue public.

OPEA members at the Tulsa Center for Behavioral Studies met recently with local legislators and an OPEA Board member to discuss several issues, including a pay raise.

OPEA’s Executive Director Sterling Zearley and Membership Representative Alicia Wright traveled to the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester on March 26 to attend a staff meeting held to focus on longtime facility issues.

The Office of Juvenile Affairs presented its FY 2009 budget request to the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Human Services, Thursday, March 27.

For too long the press has been selectively reporting on DHS issues, especially those relating to child welfare. Nothing is said about the daily sacrifices made by DHS workers who remain on the front lines. Nothing is said about the children that are saved. Nothing is said about the lives you touch.

In what the agency termed “clean up language,” the Oklahoma Tourism and Recreation Department on Tuesday inserted a committee substitute that would unclassify “all professional and managerial positions” within the agency.

At one time the source of legislative cronyism and scandalous headlines, the Oklahoma Health Department has signaled a return to accountability by announcing the publication of a new agency “Ethics Handbook.”

What was originally scheduled to be a $24 million resort at Lake Murray has now turned into a $40 million development, according to authorities with the Ardmore Tourism Authority.

Oklahoma’s Department of Corrections will submit to the 2008 Oklahoma legislature a budget that surpassed a half-billion dollars for FY ‘09

Nearly 50 employees of the L.E.Rader Center Juvenile Center packed a room to hear from OPEA Executive Director Sterling Zearley regarding issues facing them during an investigation by the US Department of Justice, issues that have been swirling around the center for a long time.