OKLAHOMA CITY – Though it was founded in 1936 and though its budget today is more than $5 billion, Oklahoma’s Department of Human Services still has serious problems.
With more than 6,200 employees and thousands of people needing help, the DHS mission seems simple: “an agency responsible for providing help to individuals and families in need through public assistance programs and managing services for seniors and people with disabilities.”
The problem is that the residents who are suffering from mental and physical health issues aren’t getting the help they need.
Sen. Paul Rosino, the chair of the Senate Health and Human Services Committee, understands this. Rosino, a Republican from Oklahoma City, has a simple goal: help those Oklahomans who need help. The problem is that a simple plan has a difficult series of solutions obstacles?. Rosino tried last year to create a separate agency to help children, he said, but his plan got shot down.
So Rosino is trying again.
“I ran the bill last year to pull child welfare and some of the other foster care and some of the other stuff out — anything that had to do with child welfare of DHS — and start our own agency,” Rosino said. “That was because of the trauma that I’m seeing that’s happening to kids, and it’s, it’s not getting better, it’s getting worse.”
Part of that reason is the large number of children needing help. Oklahoma’s child welfare workers are undertrained, Rosino said. “I think that they are overtasked.
I think this is a very hard job, and these people are getting kind of lost in the shuffle in the mega agency we know as DHS. So, my goal is that we solely have a focus on the protection and the well-being of children.”
Look at the numbers. Data from 2019 paints an ugly picture, showing 81,249 reports of alleged child abuse and/or neglect in the Sooner State.
Those reports translated to 138,907 children who were alleged victims and 15,809 child victims confirmed as to abuse, neglect, or both.
At the beginning of the 2019 fiscal year, DHS ordered 8,440 children to be removed from their homes due to abuse and/ or neglect. In addition, there were 4,416 children who had entered out-of-home care, 4,889 children exiting out-ofhome care and 7,927 children that had been removed by the end of the 2019 fiscal year.
Those numbers haven’t really improved.
Rosino continues to push for improvements and reform in the agency. Today, he has the support of Senate Pro Tempore Lonnie Paxton, a Republican from Tuttle, and the Senate’s Budget chairman, Chuck Hall.
Like Rosino, Paxton’s approach to improving DHS is a simple one: make sure Oklahoma children are safe.
“Protecting Oklahoma’s children is one of the most important responsibilities we have as policymakers,” Paxton told The Constitution.
“I appreciate Senator Rosino’s leadership on this issue and his commitment to taking the time necessary to get this proposal right.
While it didn’t get across the finish line this year, the conversations we’ve had with stakeholders have been valuable.” Because of those efforts, Paxton said lawmakers will make another attempt during the 2027 legislative session.
_______________ “I fully support continuing that work over the interim so we can return next session with the strongest possible plan to better serve vulnerable children and families across our state,” Paxton said.
Rosino said his goal is for lawmakers to focus solely on the protection and the well-being of children.
“I mean, that’s the goal,” he said. “I knew this was going to be hard. I knew that it may take a little while to get this done. Some of the bureaucrats were concerned about it more for their jobs than they were anything else. But I’m not going to give up. I’m not going to give up until we, and this is not going to be a silver bullet, and I don’t, and I don’t try to claim it’s going to be, but what we’re doing is not working, so if we’re going to do something, we need to go big and bold, and that’s my, that’s my goal.”
Hall, the Senate’s budget chief, agrees.
Hall said Rosino’s proposal represents a significant restructuring of how Oklahoma delivers services to vulnerable children.
“Senator Rosino has done tremendous work bringing agencies and stakeholders together, and I support his decision to continue refining this legislation over the coming months,” Hall said. “I look forward to working with him next session on a thoughtful, fiscally responsible plan that strengthens services for Oklahoma children who rely on state services.”
For Rosino, if improvements at DHS aren’t finished, the problems will become bigger and stronger and the state “will just continue to repeat the cycle.”
“If we don’t, more kids get hurt as we go along. So again, I don’t believe is this a silver bullet. No,” Rosino said. “Will it stop all child abuse and neglect? No. But it makes one agency accountable, one agency solely focused on the safety and well-being of children, and one agency concentrating on what’s right for kids, and using the latest technology, using the latest, you know, resources that they have, using the latest national standards.”
Having an agency solely focused on children will be a huge improvement for the state, he said.
“Right now, I mean, DHS has got the aging, they’ve got the disabled, they’ve got IDD, they’ve got child welfare, they’ve got foster care, they’ve got child care, they’ve got, you know, they’ve got child support,” he said. “I mean, they do all of these functions well.
You can’t do all these functions and do them all well. You just can’t.”
And as for Rosino, a focus on protecting children through a single agency would be a grand plan.
“You get some these elected officials, they don’t want to do hard work, they don’t. It’s hard,” Rosino said. “So, I’m a military guy. Did 25 years in the Navy. I understand hard, you know. I’m not going to run from the wall; I’m going to run through the wall. Let’s go.”
Rosino and other state lawmakers are expected to hold interim studies this year before the November election. The First Session of the 61st Oklahoma Legislature begins in February 2027.
M. Scott Carter is an award-winning political and investigative reporter with more than 40 years’ experience covering federal and state government and politics in Oklahoma. He can be reached at scott. carter@swoknews.com