STAND. COM. REP. NO. 399

 

Honolulu, Hawaii

                  

 

RE:    S.B. No. 1367

 

 

 

Honorable Donna Mercado Kim

President of the Senate

Twenty-Eighth State Legislature

Regular Session of 2015

State of Hawaii

 

Madam:

 

     Your Committees on Health and Human Services and Housing, to which was referred S.B. No. 1367 entitled:

 

"A BILL FOR AN ACT RELATING TO PROJECT KEALAHOU,"

 

beg leave to report as follows:

 

     The purpose and intent of this measure is to continue funding for Project Kealahou within the Department of Health Child and Adolescent Mental Health Division.

 

     Your Committees received testimony in support of this measure from the Judiciary, Office of Youth Services, Hawaii Youth Services, Community Alliance on Prisons, Hawaii Public Policy Advocates, and thirty individuals.  Your Committees received comments on this measure from the Department of Health.

 

     Your Committees find that Project Kealahou was developed in response to broad recognition by leaders and workers in the State's public youth service system that adolescent girls face challenges that established treatment programs do not adequately address.  This six-year, federally funded program, housed in the Department of Health Child and Adolescent Mental Health Division, promotes community-based, individualized, culturally and linguistically competent, family-driven, youth-guided, and evidence-based services.

 

     Your Committees further find that federal funding of Project Kealahou will phase out in October 2015 and that state funding is needed to continue and expand this cost-effective array of services to at-risk female youth and their families who would otherwise not have access to these services.

 

     Your Committees note that the annual cost for Project Kealahou is $900,000 and request that your Committee on Ways and Means take this amount into consideration if it chooses to hear this measure.

 

     As affirmed by the records of votes of the members of your Committees on Health and Human Services and Housing that are attached to this report, your Committees are in accord with the intent and purpose of S.B. No. 1367 and recommend that it pass Second Reading and be referred to the Committee on Ways and Means.

 

Respectfully submitted on behalf of the members of the Committees on Health and Human Services and Housing,

 

____________________________

SUZANNE CHUN OAKLAND, Chair

 

____________________________

JOSH GREEN, Chair