(WICHITA, Kan.)—
Robert Siedlecki, the newly appointed Secretary of Social and Rehabilitation Services (SRS) came to Wichita Thursday to meet state employees His visit comes amid criticism of Siedlecki's firing of 15 top agency officials, many who spent decades at SRS. He also defended efforts to get faith based groups involved in SRS and community outreach.
“We’re definitely going to respect the church and state relationship in this regard that if we give a direct grant to a faith based program, they can’t have the faith element,” said Siedlecki.
Some critics have voiced concerns over how non-traditional families will be treated in faith based programs and the Director of Hugo Wall School of Urban and Public Affairs at Wichita State University, Nancy McCarthy Snyder, said faith based programs have not typically shown to have the desired impact.
“We’ve been working on faith based initiatives for about 20 years, certainly through the federal government, and the office of faith based initiatives was created several years ago. To my knowledge there’s not much evidence they’re particularly successful,” said McCarthy Snyder.
Siedlecki talked about his reasons for laying off a number of SRS employees who had spent years moving up through the agency and said he wanted loyalty and talent leading his initiatives. However, McCarthy Snyder noted many of the positions with job turnover have been immune from political appointments in the past.
“Any new Governor has the right to select cabinet secretaries and all appointment level people,” said McCarthy Snyder. “It’s unprecedented for area director positions and lower to be political appointees however,”
Siedlecki says a focus of his time at SRS will be eliminating fraud and insisting on tangible outcomes. He knows that SRS programs face close scrutiny and wants to reassure the public their tax dollars will be used efficiently.
“Every program grant, every contract we have we want to put outcome measures to see if people are really being helped, not how many brochures were given out, not how many people were seen by a treatment person, but how many people got off of drugs, how many people got a job,” said Siedlecki.
McCarthy Snyder says that SRS, like most public organizations over the past 20 years have been moving outcome based measurements.
“The goal has been for at least 20 years, how do we get people off public assistance, how do we get them permanently placed. So attention to those outcomes has been around for a long time, that’s not a new idea,” said McCarthy Snyder.
SRS is facing $43 million in cuts to funding for the upcoming year that starts July 1. Sources say that 75 employees have left SRS in May alone and Siedlecki says he’s unsure how many more employees will be cut in the upcoming months.
