TAMA continues to collaborate with the Division of Child

Support Enforcement within the Center for Child Well-

Being on many training initiatives. This month, the 10th

Annual CSE Conference provided important information to

a record 450 attendees in Bolton Landing. With the theme

“Child Support Professionals, Support Magistrates and

Attorneys Teaming Together for Children”, the conference

focused on how each of the groups can contribute to the

well-being of the 1.1 million children served by the Child

Support program. DCSE will also host a national Child

Support Enforcement Association conference in July, 2009

in NYC, which will bring together 2000 nationwide experts.

Deputy Commissioner Scott Cade, already planning for this

event, states: "This will be a chance for New York State to

share many leading-edge initiatives, as well as learn from

other great programs around the country". Other Child

Support Enforcement training efforts in 2008 include:

Redesign of the popular CSE 101 overview course is underway by DCSE and TAMA,

adding a third day to the program to cover professional behavior, confidentiality and

a new application. CSE 101 provides a conceptual introduction to every topic a new

CSE worker will need - from front end activities to support collection.

To help districts increase their performance, DCSE trainers Dan Hill and Patty Mul-

berry are rolling out many new ASSETS modules this year using our new Online

Learning Center. Recorded ASSETS sessions will continue to be available on Training-

Space.org.

In 2007 DCSE and TAMA completed a video production, “Voluntary Acknowledge-

ment of Paternity”, released to birthing hospitals and local districts Statewide.

DCSE's Iwona Ostrowska and TAMA's Tammy Provost and Jason Moran acted in the

production (see insert).

TAMA and DCSE look forward to other great training as a result of this partnership!

I N S I D E

T H I S I S S U E :

D I R E C T O R ’ S

S P O T L I G H T : 2

B L E N D E D

L E A R N I N G 2

T R A I N I N G

S P A C E 3

O T D A / O C F S

C R O S S -

T R A I N I N G

3

N E W A D -

V A N C E D

A U D I T I N -

S T I T U T E

4

― O S T R ‖ 4

NE

W Y

OR

K S

TA

TE

-O

TD

A

M A R C H 2 0 0 8

V O L U M E 3 , I S S U E 1

T R A I N I N G T I M E ( S )

Office of Temporary and Disability Assistance

David A. Hansell, Commissioner

Division of Operations and Program Support

John M. Paolucci, Deputy Commissioner

New York State

David A. Paterson, Governor

TRAINING AND MANAGEMENT ANALYSIS

Bureau of Training and Management Analysis

Will Zwink, Director

Editor: Jason Moran

C H I L D S U P P O R T E N F O R C E M E N T T R A I N I N G

New York State has made a determined effort to ensure greater access to Food Stamp benefits through the Working Families Food Stamps Initiative.

Eligible families with an adult working 30 hours per week or households with two adults who each work at least 20 hours per week, can apply for Food

Stamp benefits via a simplified application process - by telephone as an alternative to the current face-to-face interview process conducted at Food

Stamp centers. Telephone interviews are a step towards the goal of providing Food Stamp benefits to 100,000 new households by the end of 2008.

TAMA, CEES, the NYC Human Resources Administration (HRA) and the University at Albany Professional Development Program have joined together to

train Food Stamp eligibility staff in each of the city’s five boroughs. The three-day program covers policy and procedural information related to the

WFFSI as well as the communication skills necessary to effectively conduct these telephone interviews. The initial training rollout for Queens Region

HRA FS workers began in January to overwhelmingly positive reviews. Trainees appreciated the opportunity to practice the telephone interviewing skills

and believe that this activity realistically reflected the complexity of what occurs in the centers. Training for the Bronx Region has begun. At its comple-

tion, this collaborative effort will have trained approximately 1400 NYC staff.

I N C R E A S I N G A C C E S S T O F O O D S T A M P S : T R A I N I N G I N N Y C

Local District staff attending a CSE

course in 2007: Eleanor Graves, Scho-

harie and Sara Walsh, Albany.

As we look forward to Spring, here are some training highlights that may be of interest:

A warm welcome to Michele Hildreth, of Monroe County who joins our Staff Development Advisory Committee and the Temporary Assis-

tance Subcommittee. Other new training staff in Monroe include Eric Worl (replacing Gene Sutera) as the Child Welfare Trainer and Mar-

sha Murphy as the new MA Trainer (replacing Pat Shickler). We also welcome Robert Frank as a new Staff Development Coordinator of

Erie County assuming Mike Carr’s training responsibilities. More warm welcomes to new SDCs Carl Hummel in Onondaga (replacing

Vicki Powers), Wendy Fink in Otsego and Mona Romeo of the St. Regis Mohawk Tribe at Akwesasne. All will contribute greatly to our so-

cial services training world!

I encourage all Staff Development Coordinators to attend the annual Staff Development Institute at the Thayer Hotel at West Point in

June. A workgroup of OCFS, OTDA and CUNY Hunter staff have come up with a great program, including a keynote by Tim Gard. Mr.

Gard, a former eligibility worker, now provides motivational talks around the country. Also on the schedule is a local district Best Prac-

tices panel to be moderated by Joan Smrtic, SDC of Cayuga County. The panel includes Staff Development Coordinators Marilyn Rooney

(Fulton), Susan Iona (Schenectady), Regina Russ (NYC HRA), Michele Hildreth (Monroe) and Mike Soltish (Dutchess) and will share tips

on how they stay on top of the tremendous flow of training information from several State agencies and direct people in need of training

to the appropriate resources.

In a related vein, kudos to Phoebe Schimpf and Helene Sobelman of OCFS for developing a great blog for SDCs. If you haven’t already,

please take a look at the ongoing discussions about the Staff Development Institute by logging on to: http://stars.bsc-cdhs.org/blogs/.

You can provide input about workshops, preview workshop descriptions and discuss the institute’s cyber café.

TAMA is already preparing for the 2009 training cycle. We’re going to make our needs assessment process a little easier for the districts

this year. In April, local district SDCs and Program Directors (TA, FS, CSE and HEAP) will be directed to TrainingSpace.org to complete our

“20 Under 20” Needs Assessment. There will be twenty programmatic questions that should take no longer than 20 minutes to com-

plete. ...We promise!

We’re pleased that plans are underway to update portions of the popular but outmoded CBT “Journey”. Journey has long been used by

local districts to provide an overview of social services to new staff. A joint OCFS/OTDA workgroup is exploring options and we have

agreed to update the historical section of the existing material and post it to TrainingSpace.org . Laura Forster of OCFS is the lead devel-

oper working with PDP TrainingSpace staff. This is in response to many requests from SDCs.

Sadly, we note the passing of Ginny Gilbertson, a PDP curricula designer and kinesthetic trainer who worked with us on employment ,

Welfare-to-Work, Food Stamp and TANF training. She brought a high degree of precision to her efforts and will be missed by all of us.

We say farewell and good luck in the art world to our friend and colleague George Dowse, graphic designer extraordinaire at PDP.

George designed many of our agency’s posters and cover art for training materials - including the DCSE logo on the cover of this issue.

After 22 years at PDP, George has retired to pursue his passion of painting - you may encounter him at regional art shows.

We also say farewell to our colleagues Paula Hennessy and Carol Frament of OCFS. Paula retired recently and we’ll miss her lively par-

ticipation in advisory groups. Carol will retire in April and specifically handles our jointly-funded fiscal matters with patience and profes-

sionalism. Many of us in TAMA worked closely with both; we’re sorry to see them go, but wish them well!

D I R E C T O R ’ S S P O T L I G H T – W I L L Z W I N K

Page 2 T R A I N I N G T I M E ( S )

B L E N D E D L E A R N I N G U P D A T E : B U D G E T I N G A N D C O D I N G

In our September edition, we reported that the Blended Learning workgroup of local district

and State staff determined that the Budgeting and Coding segments of our residential Insti-

tute for Temporary Assistance Programs (ITAP) curriculum would be converted to a web-

based module. This decision was based on an extensive survey conducted with local dis-

trict Income Maintenance/Temporary Assistance workers. Dan Feinberg of the Professional

Development Program is working tirelessly to develop the web infrastructure for the Budget-

ing and Coding module. It is now in place and the first release - Determining The TA House-

hold - is in its last phase of review. Dan states: “To ensure a quality product, TAMA has

been working with PDP staff to build a module capable of handling multiple phases. By

approaching the development in this manner, we hope the module will serve all local dis-

trict budgeting and coding needs as a one-stop source”.

The first module covers an Introduction to the Budgeting Process, ABEL, Determining the TA

Household, Identifying Household Needs, Calculating a Basic Budget and Recouping Over-

payments and Applying Sanctions. We intend to preview completed portions in June at the

SDC Institute.

Page 3 V O L U M E 3 , I S S U E 1

TrainingSpace.org, TAMA’s online training web portal, continued to grow throughout 2007 and is in the midst of another busy year. The

TrainingSpace.org website expanded its catalogue of interactive

web-based training courses and continues to grow in the areas

of helpful resources, pre-recorded teleconferences and

community-of-practice forums for organized workgroups. At the

close of 2007, TrainingSpace reached 5,000 users since its

launch in June of 2005. A sampling of the content we added

with our PDP partners in 2007 includes: The Local District

Guide to the SSI Process; new information regarding the

Commissioners' Dashboard portal, a recent OTDA Veterans

Benefit video, “Serving Those Who Served”, and information on

the Albany, Harlem, and OTDA/TAMA Online Learning training

facilities. The HEAP Eligibility and Certification course was also

updated to reflect changes for the 2007-2008 heating season.

While the delivery of asynchronous training modules has

been the bread and butter of TrainingSpace, the posting of

supportive training materials allows for the enrichment of

classroom-based courses. One of TAMA’s first endeavours in

this area was the posting of the ITAP “Wrap-around” materials.

More recent postings include the addition of support materials

for the Food Stamps Telephone Recertification Pilot, the

Commissioner’s Planning Forum “From Performance

Measurement to Outcome Performance Management”, MDI

material on project management, the Homeless Shelter

Training Institute brochure and WTW Program Notes. Our sister

agency, the Office of Children and Family Services, seamlessly began adding content on the Protective Services for Adults System, Co-

Occurring Disorders Workshop and Legal Training this past year. At the request of the local districts, TAMA developed a process for providing

access to voluntary agency workers seeking TrainingSpace.org courses. Voluntary agency staff can now create a username and password to

log into TrainingSpace.org through NYS Directory Services. In conjunction with the OTDA Information Security Office, we also rolled out a

mandated Information Security Awareness Training (ISAT) to all OTDA staff in 2006. This course was made available in January for the Local

District Staff Development Coordinators to assess the feasibility of making the ISAT course available to local district staff.

L D S S C R O S S T R A I N I N G N E E D S A S S E S S M E N T — B R E A K I N G T H E C Y C L E O F D E P E N D E N C Y

OTDA and OCFS formed a “Breaking the Cycle of Dependency” workgroup in 2007 con-

centrating on meeting the needs of the Child-Only caseload. A goal of this collaboration

is to develop a cross-training curriculum to enhance the understanding of Temporary

Assistance programs and requirements by OCFS Child Welfare staff, and of Child Wel-

fare programs by Temporary Assistance staff.

The workgroup developed and distributed a survey to TA and CW Directors, as well as

to Staff Development Coordinators in December. Regina Andrews, survey designer,

states: “Each program respondent was asked to rank topics that they felt their staff

would need to know about the other program area and what topic they felt the other

program area should know about their area. Staff Development Coordinators provided

a more generalist response, ranking topics they felt were important for staff from each

program to know and estimating the total number of trainees who would participate”.

Seventy-three responses representing 35 counties were received.

Fifteen TA content topics were included for consideration. Each of these topics re-

ceived at least one rank of very important for staff to learn. Seventy-seven percent of CW respondents indicated that the most important topic

for their staff to understand was the eligibility criteria for federal and State programs. TA Directors and Staff Development Coordinators

stated that the application process was very important for CW staff to understand. Each group of respondents had the same three topics

among their top five “very important” rating: the application process; TA program requirements and transitional benefits.

Thirteen Child Welfare topics were listed for consideration. Three topics that each group rated as most important were: the child welfare mis-

sion and expected outcomes; custody and guardianship; and kinship resources. Both TA and CW respondents agreed that it is very important

for TA staff to understand child protective services and family preservation. SDC’s stated that service planning was very important. The work-

group will continue to develop opportunities to develop training and share the information elicited through the survey.

TAMA’s Patrick Mills, Online Training Center Coordinator, explaining how to ac-

cess TrainingSpace.org in the new Center.

A D V A N C E D A U D I T I N S T I T U T E

O N S I T E T R A I N I N G R E Q U E S T A P P L I C A T I O N

Jason Moran

Mike Prevost

Tammy Provost

Lisa Rounds

Kevin Sullivan

John Thompson

JoAnne Wilson

N E W Y O R K S T A T E - O T D A

Program Training Team

Mike Prevost: 518-474-8518

Management Team

John Thompson: 518-473-8623

Administrative Team

Carlise Lovelady: 518-473-4482

Office Contact Info: Will Zwink, Director

40 N Pearl St. 12-C

Albany, NY 12243

Phone: 518-402-9600

Fax: 518–408-3346

Please forward all com-

ments to: Jason Moran

TAMA Staff

(click a name to send an e-mail)

TAMA is pleased to announce that our online Onsite Training Request Applica-

tion is now available for use by Staff Development Coordinators on Cen-

traport. “OSTR” can be used by local districts to request particular TAMA

training that can be tailored to specific county needs. We have also revised

our training catalog to match the dropdown menu generated by the applica-

tion.

The application, which has been under construction since early 2006, is now

complete and complies with the NYS Office for Technology policies on infor-

mation security and three-tiered architecture. We would like to thank our

colleagues in the OTDA Bureau of Information Technology, specifically Bill

Vadnais, for their hard work in developing this application.

Lisa Rounds, TAMA coordinator for the project states: “Once a local district

submits an online request, the new system sends an automated e-mail notifi-

cation to the SDC as a confirmation. Because there are instances when re-

quests are received from local district without prior SDC knowledge, the sys-

tem also includes a function to ensure that the SDC is made aware of every

request generated from their county.” Please look for the new automated

onsite training request form under “Training and Support” on Centraport. For

more information about the Onsite Training Request Application, please con-

tact TAMA at (518) 402-9600.

TAMA’s Training

Catalog is being up-

dated for 2008. The

2007 Training Cata-

log remains available

on TAMA’s Intranet

Homepage. Please

click on the link be-

low:

Training Catalog

TR

AI

NI

NG

C

AT

AL

OG

Dawn Abbey

Regina Andrews

Desiree Dukes

Patty Gotte

Carlise Lovelady

Paula Marshman

Patrick Mills

In 2007 OTDA’s Audit and Quality Improvement staff sought TAMA and SUNY Al-

bany’s Professional Development Program assistance in developing a two-day

“Advanced Audit Institute.” The new Advanced Audit Institute, piloted in November

of 2007, expands on the principles covered in an existing basic Audit Training

Institute. The advanced training covers critical thinking, case analysis, assessing

quality and writing audit findings. Audit and Quality Improvement Director Jim

White states “The new course is designed to enhance an auditor’s level of critical

thinking. We hope it will help in identifying and analyzing the data needed to

reach reliable audit conclusions and sharpen abilities to write detailed audit find-

ings. We are very pleased with the initial offerings and will continue to enhance the

curriculum.” A&QI subject matter experts worked conscientiously to develop real-

istic case scenarios, then worked with PDP and TAMA staff to organize material

into an appropriate curriculum.

This Advanced Institute now rounds out OTDA’s repertoire of Audit and Fraud train-

ing courses, which includes:

Welfare Fraud Basic Training Institute: Targeting local district staff, this five-

day institute focuses on legal definitions and activities within welfare fraud,

eligibility processing, fraud prevention and the investigative tools of interview-

ing and interrogation.

Audit Training Institute: This three-day

basic institute for State OTDA staff cov-

ers the audit environment, planning an

audit and collecting and analyzing data,

as well as developing audit findings and

audit outcomes.

Audit and Quality Improvement Director Jim

White presents appreciation plaques to PDP’s

Art Copeland and Cecily Coleman, Dr. Ingrid

Fisher, the SUNYA Accounting professor who

instructs the new Institute and TAMA’s Kevin

Sullivan, contract manager for the project.