Minnesota's Department of Human Services needs support

Since I became commissioner of the Minnesota Department of Human Services in December, I have traveled across the state and have seen the tremendous impact the department's work has on people's lives. It's important for me to see firsthand how our services are working and whether people are being well cared for. One of my early visits was with two men living in Willmar who are under my guardianship. Both are unable to speak because of their disabilities. After the visit, I was struck by the way my responsibility to these individuals reflects our role as an agency — to speak for people without a voice.

It is for them — and for our employees — that we need the Legislature to fully support additional funding for DHS' 200 facilities that provide treatment and services for people with mental illness, chemical dependency and developmental disabilities.

About 12,000 people are served by DHS direct-care programs each year. Most of them have nowhere else to turn. Over the last several years, funding has not kept up with the increasingly complex needs and sometimes aggressive behaviors of the people entrusted to our care in our Anoka-Metro Regional Treatment Center, the Minnesota Security Hospital and state-operated group homes.

In Anoka, where patients in acute psychiatric crisis go for care, we have a serious bottleneck in the state's mental health system. On any given day, nearly half of our patients no longer need to stay at the hospital, but there are no appropriate services available in the community. Other psychiatric beds in our state system sit empty because we don't have funding to pay for staff at those locations. All the while, people are stuck in emergency rooms and jails across Minnesota waiting for a state bed to open up. In some cases, regulatory agencies have found that we've failed to meet basic standards for care.

As Minnesotans, we want and need better for these vulnerable citizens.

Our 3,500 dedicated staff members work in challenging environments. In recent years, we've seen increases in injuries, forced overtime and high turnover. I have heard directly from staff members who are often required to work double shifts, which is especially tiring with volatile patients. I've talked to staff who were anxious about returning to work after being assaulted by patients hiding around blind corners.

Gov. Mark Dayton recognizes the need to stabilize DHS' direct-care programs and ensure that we are providing the quality care Minnesotans would expect for their own family members. His supplemental budget and bonding recommendations include significant investments in staffing, treatment and safer facilities.

Together, these changes will cost about $104.7 million during the biennium and will add more than 490 full-time-equivalent positions in the next fiscal year. An additional $72.6 million is recommended to improve or replace unsafe facilities.

The total amount is substantial, but change is needed. Too many people are stuck in institutions instead of moving forward with their recovery and their lives. And it's costly. In the first half of fiscal year 2016 alone, taxpayers have spent more than $10 million on patients at Anoka who were ready to move to the community, far more than it would have cost if they could have been discharged to the community. It's best for the patients and their recovery if they move into a more appropriate setting as soon as they are ready.

This proposal goes hand-in-hand with last session's historic $46 million investment in community-based mental health services. The people we serve have complex needs that often cross many areas of the mental, physical and chemical health care systems. They move from our hospitals to community services and private providers. They don't live in silos, and neither can our services.

Our hospitals, group homes and treatment programs should be places of sanctuary and recovery — where any of us would be comforted to know our family member is being taken care of. It is time for the Legislature to support funding that will help more Minnesotans receive the care they need in the safest environment possible.