Let's Get Honest! Absolutely Uncommon Analysis of Family & Conciliation Courts' Operations, Practices, & History

That title, again, with case-sensitive short-link ending “-62M”:

Understand Statewide “CADV” Funding (CFDAs 93591, 93592, 93671, and 93136 grants to Statewide Orgs) But Also Check Out “Family and Community Violence Prevention” (93910) in all its Male/Minority-focused Wealth — Over $99M to One Recipient under ONE Principal Investigator, Spanning 10 years — and Glory   This post reviews them, and who’s been getting them.

What program offices (respectively) over at HHS these come through also gets interesting….

POST NAVIGATION: My “Title Disclaimer” (fine-print, white-background, maroon-bordered) section, with several “divisions” within it, may help the rest of the post go smoother by defining some terms.  In that section I’m also “CMA,” Covering My [Posterior], for calling several different CFDA’s “CADV” funding in case of readers who would be glad to find any nit they can pick (errors) in this presentation which overall does not give the network a  passing grade of A, B or even C in terms of the stated program purposes.  (Only one of those CFDAs specifies “statewide coalition against domestic violence” [CADV] or very similar phrase matching ONE of the several categories regarding “family violence, domestic violence and dating violence” specified under the authorizing legislation. The CFDA#s mirror the authorizing legislation (by section) language).

[That section is below the first set of images]

In terms of what the macro-system (interaction between policy-setters, public law, existing organizations, funding, HHS officials receiving or rejecting grant applicants and distributing the financial aid to the same, all the subcontractors which may be engaged at any point to operate or evaluate or disseminate “best practices” and so forth) seems to have been designed to do (that is, to control the victims, dominate the field, and set up some, support other existing related professions* through jockeying for position to legislate, authorize, appropriate, spend (including to staff, train, consult, technically advise and coordinate within systems and across systems — at the professional level) who gets the most funding** and systematically, year after year after year, withhold from the victims AND the public strategically important information about the field, leaving the public to “figure it out” if they dare (or not figure it out) — the overall situation passes with flying colors.  BUT — those would be two different agendas:  One, appearances (for political positives) and Two, the functional reality at the receiving end, individual parents, citizens, and litigants. (** I decided to add images for “*” so the second comment to this paragraph, the “**”, is considerably below, after those images.)

** “funding” 42 U.S. Code Chapter 110 – FAMILY VIOLENCE PREVENTION AND SERVICES (this version current through 2010 and referring to years 2011-2015.  I believe it’s the most recent, but see disclaimers on that site, or check elsewhere for a more current version.  I did not find any for 2016…)

All of this is a lot of information to process!  I’ve split the topic into different posts, and it’s still a lot even after all my years of processing this type of information, to narrate and show. I’ll do my best!  One thing that this post may seem to emphasize (and it seems to be true) — the statewide domestic violence coalitions (“CADVs”) are NOT at the top of the heap even of the funds authorized under FVPSA — and those are not the only “Family Violence and Injury Prevention” funds around either.

 

Title Disclaimer:  In this white-background, maroon-bordered section “Title Disclaimer” I’m explaining and referencing some terms, organizations and situations, some of which are not covered in this post, but which have been (extensively) in this blog.  If I included all the links, I’d never get THIS post published. So this section is “take it on faith” (or keep reading for where I have linked, etc.)  Where something’s an unfamiliar acronym, or concept, feel free to search it on this blog, search it on the Internet yourself, put it on the back burner for later, and keep reading (!!), or whatever else you wish.

In this post I’m looking at those categories, the database that reveals who got what, and in the process, specific grantees.  Having written the post, and wanting to know more about the one I hadn’t seen before (93910) because I wasn’t researching that particular state university (which I later learned only became “University” in 2004, and the bulk of the grants under 93910 to it seem to have occurred 1994-2004.  A university is not a small or medium-sized nonprofit in the domestic violence network, so I think this oversight is understandable) I re-visited CFDA.gov and have posted a few things about it here.

• 93.910 (from CFDA.gov, taken March2,2017, any Links will be active)- Family and Community Violence Prevention Program – CFDA: Programs
  • (part only … read it for the whole documentation).  ” Financial Information (120) Account Identification (121): 75-0120-0-1-551. Obligations (122): (Cooperative Agreements) FY 15 $8,636,020; FY 16 est $6,578,520; and FY 17 Estimate Not Available – Youth Empowerment Program II Minority Youth Violence Prevention: Integrating Public Health and Community Policing.

    Range and Average of Financial Assistance (123): $250,000 to $500,000.

    Program Accomplishments (130):  Not Applicable.

    

    Click here to see notes re 93910 (but they generally reflect the post anyhow) (SShot 2017-03-07 at 12.53PM)

• CFDA: Progr 93.136 – Injury Prevn + Control Rsrch and State+ Community-Based Programs – 4Mar2017 from CFDA.gov (<== That’s a printout of the whole web page; three annotated screenprints follow. To see them full-sized click this link or with annotations, links in their Captions (for the first two).  This category# (93136) covers different types of grants, and a wide range of possibly kinds of injuries — i.e. motor vehicle, prescription drug overdose, etc., not
  just family violence-related (and it doesn’t mention that as a type in its description, either:)

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The key lessons I took from doing the look-ups and write-ups for this post was that at NO point in time is it advisable for the US population to forget the importance of attempting maintain a keen awareness of ALL FEDERAL AGENCY Financing for ALL programs, and how to discover from their own documents, declarations, databases (where they even exist) and how the services have been organized.  Because the CAFRs I’ve talked about repeatedly (since 2012 when I discovered them) in general do not go down to “CFDA” or “Accounting #s” labels, there should be some familiarity with the various reporting systems that do handle them.

It also being so clear that at all levels (it seems) not only are we supporting direct government services, but we are indirectly supporting their being contracted and outsourced to private corporations which come in two kinds:  for-profit and not-for-profit, BUT, any non-profits can easily form related entities which are for-profit businesses, such as an LLC.

That information would be shown (a few layers deep — or pages back) on a Schedule (for Form 990, it’s Schedule R) to the organization itself, and Schedule L (Transactions with Interested Persons)   Therefore to understanding who’s behind which policy, you end up digging through tax returns — LOTS of them — including their schedules, making notes, and at some point, making a qualitative evaluation on the filing entity and, depending on how deeply it influences the public policy, the public policy itself….

A further lookup of some of those “Related Entity” LLCs find out that the sole or primary member of it is the originating nonprofit anyhow..

As I found out with attempting to locate “First Five Years Fund” in time (date of origin) and space (legal domicile), which led to the nonprofit “Ounce of Prevention Fund,”  its related entity “First Five Years, LLC” and its programming, “Educare” and posted in (as I recall) late 2016.  The website FFYF.org, while telling many stories, did not divulge this information clearly, if at all.

DETAILS from the above LLC show date of origin only 2008, legal domicile Delaware Details from FFYF (viewed 11-30-2016) IL Sec of State filing, click for full-size. (Included for an example in my Mar.5,2017 post on the “CADV” CFDAs)

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Oz of Preventn Fund (IL EIN#363186328) FYr2014 Schedule R showing ONE is “First Five Years Fund, LLC” WHOEVER CONTROLS “Ounce of Prevention Fund” CONTROLS “First Five Years Fund.” Next logical question — who established and who, primarily, funds Ounce of Prevention (the IL 501©3; there is a FL one)?

(All this is a fast-review of some research I did earlier, curious about FFYF.org; the annotated images were saved in a folder; I’m pulling them out again for illustration of what can be involved IF one is looking for the true sources of revenue behind a program, where the website advertising the programming is NOT too inclined to reveal exactly which major corporate clout is behind it.  In this case, the push is for policy regarding PUBLIC institutions, interacting children up to the age of five).

Ounce of Prevention Fund itself is now (or at last look) a $65M assets Form 990-filer, however, a look inside one of its major funders (which I probably discovered off-990 as this usually wouldn’t be revealed) was Buffett Early Childhood Fund, itself a Form-990PF filer.

So, who funds Buffett Early Childhood Fund (which itself files a Form 990PF?)  I uploaded the images from its Schedule B, you’ll see a “Sherwood Foundation” (connected to Susan Buffett; look at the amounts and annotations I did a few months ago…)

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Sound like a circular maze yet?

 

In addition to all this, as part of government services (federal agencies and state) there are also two basic kinds of universities in place here:  again, (1) public (state-supported) or (2) private.  As with corporations, under private universities, they come in the IRS designation (not really a does it profit or not? designation, but a tax-status; how they must file returns, and, as a consequence, what taxes must be paid ON the profits) for-profit or non-profit.   The thing with universities is that they tend to be so large, tracking specific funding of specific programs based on the cause, gets harder, regardless of the type of university.

Other than that I’d better figure out how to process the sense of betrayal and, I admit at times, hopelessness I feel in confirming my suspicions that as early as the 1980s and 1990s (that is BEFORE welfare reform of 1996 and BEFORE the passage of the 1994 Violence Against Women Act) legislation was in place to dominate and control the subject matter of violence against women, domestic violence, the funding available to Battered Women’s Shelters (when immediate flight seems the best or temporarily only alternative) vs. the funding available pushing women to stay married, and punishing them for attempting to raise their children NOT married or NOT with co-habiting biological fathers — and when it’s not safe, make personal, individual choices to stay away from those fathers after having left for reasons of personal safety.
Domestic violence organization leaders, employees, child welfare workers, HHS employees and others may already know this material on the CFDA#S involving their field (I doubt they know about the condition of the TAGGS.hhs.gov database exclusion of searching on certain DV0-related CFDAs).  No doubt they know about each other and which organizations are in the network, and probably (many of the staff involved, or boards of directors) about also the authorizing legislation — after all, many of these organizations have lawyers on staff or on their boards.

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However, I am writing for the “layperson” who may think that this is none of his/her business, but is concerned about the subject matter these organizations are supposed to be addressing, and service delivery. Or, people just in general concerned about where their tax receipts and all the other kinds of receipts collected by federal, state and local governments by virtue of their living, working, renting, driving, marrying, divorcing, sometimes filing court actions, paying or receiving child support, are going.

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I am also writing so that the first category of people (DV leaders, etc.), if they stray across this site, may see on-line the response of “laypersons” on learning what was done in the past, without their full, or fully-informed participation and consent, to negatively affect their prospects for safety — in the name of safety — and solvency — in the name of public welfare (i.e., under PRWORA particularly) a generation or two ago, and which is now supposed to be acceptable simply because it’s traditional practice.  So they may know that “business as usual” may not be “business as usual” forever, and that at least one blogger living in California, USA has noticed  (as I assume also have some of my now over 1,000 followers, and a few faithful re-bloggers to other countries).

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And that perhaps they might pay better attention to their own ethical filing of tax returns, maintaining legitimate IRS and Corporate status in EVERY state, and from now on, when “helping” domestic violence victims seeking help, when they are women with children — let them know about the HMRF funding and other things they WILL be up against in custody court.

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Unless someone has the political guts to simply stop the HMRF funding (long overdue) and “drain the swamp” — meaning the REAL swamp soaking up federal receipts without corresponding accountability  THROUGHOUT — and that’s the nonprofit sector; the “Private” partner in our so-famous “Public/Private Partnerships” and collaborations!

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I’m also writing for people who by virtue of living in the United States are everyday interacting with people (of all ages) who’ve been crunched through the system, before, during, or after being crunched, MANY of them, through one or more forms of personal, intimate or “domestic” partner or family violence.  In looking at service delivery to protect the population who lives here from, basically, each other, we ought to know how to look at federal, state, county, and even more local finances, and which influential local organizations (for profit or not for profit), with their employees, might just be on the take — receiving grants, or ongoing revenue/income streams — from the federal agencies.  Particularly the largest grant-making agency here, HHS.

We ought to become (ALL) more fluent on the basics of these matters.  I had no training courses, I am only self-taught (you’d be surprised how far that can go over time, with motivation and practice), and from my own connections with other people who have been “custody-case-churned,” or dealing with relatives or neighbors who were “custody-case-churned,” I feel it’s safe to say, most don’t take time to look at these things.

It is, after all, still time-consuming and a form of work without immediate gratification; and vocabulary, concepts, or even websites that are new, do require exposure, attention and exercising (practice) time before mastering some of the basics.   Understanding seems to be that way.   So… that’s my excuse for dragging people (as I went myself) again through who or what is “CFDA,” why I’m so interested in this TAGGS.hhs.gov database as the only primary visible record of grantees administered by HHS, and in particular, why there should be one set of funding for Domestic Violence Prevention (under the first three, maybe four CFDAs in the title) and another one, with a different and countering focus — and much larger — under the fifth CFDA in the title with a focus on Minority Males ONLY.   What about minority “females”?

I already knew, and I think the word may be gradually getting out (though not through the DV Coalitions, National Domestic VIolence Hotlines, or DELTA, etc. leadership, that’s for sure…) that there exist certain grants streams promoting fathers’ rights in custody, child welfare and when it comes to post-domestic violence filings, to insist ongoing contact and services to retain that contact with their children who likely have witnessed the violence, been affected by it, and possibly direct victims of it, under the themes of Access and Visitation (administered under HHS/ACF/OCSE – Child Support Enforcement), which supports professions incentivizing custody outcomes towards fathers, AND that there actually exist HMRF funding administered under HHS/ACF/OFA under Title IV-A (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, a.k.a. “TANF.”).

See next two images (and captions).  I was also stunned to realize that an individual working for a nonprofit I blogged, and warned should be taken seriously and made a note of — the “National Governors’ Association Center for Best Practices” (“NGA/CGC”) with its Corporate Fellows list (enabling direct donation and connection to state governors in a way normal citizens would be hard put to get, THROUGH DONATIONS), and how very many of those were into the pharmaceutical arena (though by no means limited to that arena).

I also posted on NGA for the presentations to governors as far back as 1994 promoting “responsible fatherhood” and “fatherhood initiatives” as a cause (and again, in 1999 on “Disconnected Dads” and featuring the “Family Impact Seminars.”  I DNR all the details at this moment, but bet that some of this is on the sidebar to this blog.  So take a look:

 

 

In studying this further, I was taken back to the authorizing legislation, which dates to 1984 (Family Violence Services and Prevention Act) and its several changes over the year, until the situation we have now has been baked into public law.

To discover that parallel to this and starting around the same time( mid-1980s), the OMH (Office of Minority Health) was created — and about 5 years later, in 1991, the Operating Division of ACF (Administration for Children and Families), and that isn’t (or at least the grants I saw administered under it weren’t) even handled by an “Operating” Division, but instead under an Administration one (Assistant Secretary of Health, such that the OpDiv/Program Office reading of those 93910 grants is OASH/OMH). (I can’t find that footer but here’s the organizational chart — Office of the Secretary on the left column, and “OpDivs” starting with Administration for Children and Families, on the right (see image with organizational chart below).

 

 

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AFTER discovering and looking closer at the largest grantee under 93910, and looking at briefly at the origins of the OMH (posted on HHS.gov website regarding it), I went back to CFDA.gov and recognized that the category 93910 itself — not just that particular grant — had the word “Males” in it.

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A “CFDA#” is a number assigned under the “Catalog of Federal Domestic Assistance.”

CFDA.gov has a pie chart (see image) showing, by top five “issuers” (Federal Departments) showing by percentages. In my posts I have been improperly calling these “Categories” of FDA, but having in looking for a full list of CFDAs on this site, I am reminded that the “C” refers to “Catalog” (a specific listing) and not “Category” which is a more general term.  Mea culpa (sorry!) — and here’s that image as of 2017 (I’ve also posted it years ago on this blog).

 

CFDAs also have names, and, this blog also posts links to better make the connections, those names are often associated with specific sections under legislated authorization/appropriation by Congress, through respective agencies (Here, I’m dealing with HHS mostly), so a visualization of the impact of that legislation must include a look at (minimum) the grants and grantees involved in it.  You cannot judge an organization — or a grant — just by its individual title, or by its individual award number (unless you’re a genius, and working with or for HHS and know what their numbering systems signify).One of the most coherent ways to comprehend — if any way exists — would be to run reports selecting on specific CFDA#s, to get a perspective.  Then the grantees can be looked at. Unfortunately, as TAGGS.HHS.GOV is now sort of re-surfaced (the user interface changed within the last year, or less) as it gets more and more flexible on search results, it’s imposed more limitations making some kinds of searches simply impossible.  I need to write HHS, find out who’s in charge of this fiasco (or contracted out for it, if it’s a new entity), and why they can’t get it right for the sake of the American public. Or is it just a “won’t” get it right?

For example, here’s evidence you just cannot do an Advanced search on CFDA 93591 OR 93591 at this database — there’s nowhere to key it in, and it’s not on the list (in numerical order). I’ve considered options such as — a CFDA won’t display unless the year, or issuing Program Office/OpDiv is checked under which funds were assigned — but that would require the average person to be a database AND HHS mind-reader to navigate.  IF the data exists in the field “CFDA#” then a list of CFDA#s should show then all, and let us figure out which ones are important!  (Take a few minutes with the next image to see, please): The second image shows “MIA” option to search for CFDA 93671, which is by title “Family Violence Prevention and Services/Grants for Battered Women’s Shelters: Grants to States and Indian Tribes,”

 

 

SO – if money was authorized for, say, a National Domestic Violence Hotline (and a version of the FVPSA does specify $3,500,000 a year for this), which tells victims to go call those on the DV Network ,including Statewide Coalitions (and their subgrantees), than that same hotline might also be DE_railing awareness of funding outside the “DV” field under “Violence Prevention” and funding to organizations from which a typical battered woman might NOT get help (particularly after the custody battles begin…), but a typical man, including a batterer, or a father not a batterer, MIGHT get help, including free legal help.

Or, under the same FVPSA of 1984 (2010 re-authorization I’m quoting here), $6,000,000 a year is to go to “Domestic Violence Prevention Enhancement and Leadership Through Alliances” (“DELTA” it seems to have been called), and those groups refuse to take into account feedback from women survivors on the programming (after all, can such women pay them?  Are these women still “warm bodies” for the 501©3 programs, or “Poster Child” spokespersons who could be carted around, pulled out for conference testimony, or whose stories could be electronically related for the pathos and to cite the hero organizations, to keep the funds coming — while continuing the silence on the gender-bias and demographic bias (i.e., single-parent vs. re/married) inherent in TANF-based HMRF funding?

And when these other, well-funded, or well-heeled programs are aimed at professionals in social services systems with which women may have to interact, and those professionals have already been “groomed” into male-accomodation, or in this cases “minority-male” accommodations vis a vis mothers of children …. when those funds come from a public source, should not the public know about it?

 

This post title with shortlink:

Understand Statewide “CADV” Funding (CFDAs 93591, 93592, 93671, and 93136 grants to Statewide Orgs) But Also Check Out “Family and Community Violence Prevention” (93910) in all its Male/Minority-focused Wealth (Over $99M to One Recipient under ONE Principal Investigator, Spanning 10 years) and Glory (started 2/28/2017, case-sensitive short-link ends “-62M”)

The phrase ASH/OMH-endorsed Glory is in here only because of a specific grants category (CFDA# 93910) and under it, a gloriously large (and almost) continuously “non-competing continuation”  award administered under ASH/OMH which has been running, apparently, since before welfare reform, parallel and pulling in a different direction from HHS funding to the domestic violence statewide coalitions which over time I have come to understand are operating basically as a sort of “DV cartel.”

SAMPLE QUOTE FROM THIS POST (YellowBackground):

I’ll show this in context again below, but click on the image caption to see full-sized, that the second column labels the “OpDiv” (HHS Operating Division) ASH/OMH.  Routing violence prevention/ male-focused project funding through here as opposed to the standard routes seems a little devious; people aware of the PRWORA-appropriated CFDA 93086 (“Healthy marriage/Responsible Fatherhood”) [that capitalization is how it reads at TAGGS.hhs.gov] category otherwise would expect more of the father-centric and “Minority Male Violence Prevention” programming to be coming like that programming, through the HHS OpDiv “Administration for Children and Families” (“ACF”), and supporting the organizations that promote supervised visitation, batterers’ intervention, etc. –  as well as the ones promoting marriage and relationship education (“HMRF” or Healthy Marriage/ResponsibleFatherhood-style programming).    I was aware that the topic could be handled under many different categories (CFDAs) but was still surprised to see the difference in amounts funded under it.

 

<==As you can see (click the link under colorfully-annotated image with an oval at top-left corner, captioned “Searching CFDA 93910…” to read full-sized) multi-million-dollar grants (most over $10M) were received in 1995, -96, -97, -98, -99, 2000, 2001, -02 (not -03), -04, and 2005.  In fact, two $17M ones on the same day (with a similar but not identical grant#), and among the others, at least two entries with money — but without a DUNS# (defeating a search by DUNS# for a reliable total), and other what I’d have to call (and you should too…) “Anomalies.”ALL of those awards to this entity (Central State University) (regardless of similar but not identical numbers to Grant D67MP94001 on some of them*) are titled “A Series of HBCU Models to Reduce Minority Male Violence” and THE smallest one is $7,400,000.  (HBCU = Historically Black Colleges and Universities)“DV CARTEL”– COORDINATED CONTROL for Public/Private PrivilegesI use the term “DV Cartel” in part from having looked at the financing, the missing elements in their overall rhetoric; the silence on the things I then had to blog as, obviously, these HHS-supported state-wide DV coalitions and some of their larger “special issue resource center” brothers and sisters (such as “Domestic Abuse Intervention Programs, Inc.”, and the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges, Inc. as recipients of, generally speaking, more types and larger “Preventing Violence” grants from HHS) are not about to … maybe the refusal to “out” other HHS fathers’-rights (whether or not under “minority” umbrella)-centric grants recipients while being themselves (some, major, others, not so major) recipients is in part what those payments are for — a “Coordinated Community Response” of “Silence on the Strategic public AND private and university-based (cf. FRPN.org at Temple University, Philadelphia, but co-directed with Jessica Pearson of Center for Policy Research, Inc. of (like NCADV) Denver) Funding of Fatherhood Researchers and Practitioners.”The fatherhood field was developing at least since the mid-1985s in the form of influential  nonprofits and at least the early 1990s, at the federal agency level and particularly also woven into programming under the category of “Children’s Rights.”  Among the results of ongoing demands for funding was the creation of a “field of practice” and of course, ongoing sponsorship (by the public and joined by private tax-exempt foundations, and validated/evaluated by nonprofits all along the way to justify (such as MDRC)) of that named field (“fatherhood”) and related ones (batterers intervention services / programming being a primary one, and along with it, supervised visitation).  This also has wound its way, as we can see, into anything “domestic violence” regardless of whether organizations may have all-female board members or not.My Purpose in blogging Action OHIO Coalition…NCADV… ODVN.org (also Ohio).. and This

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I was hoping to get around to posting the Ohio IPV Collaborative (and the various key “players” (entities and non-entities posing as entities) involved), having already looked up most of them shown on the various websites, and found oddities, anomalies, things that are not what they are portrayed as, and more questions than answers in the whole deal:  WHY this particular setup?  WHY did it take so very many agencies, organizations and why so many logos in what is, bottom line, a free-hand-off to, apparently so far, a single LLC, LLP and (expired) Nonprofit owner, David Mandel and the ‘Safe and Together(™)” curriculum?

but this information surfaced as I was, in explaining the DV Coalitions and looking for the HHS grants to the same, under certain CFDA numbers as grants are categorized for all federal agencies, noticing both some language creep and the disappearance of significant CFDAs from the TAGGS.HHS.gov Advanced Search display list.  While some of these did show up on the “Basic Search Display” list I learned (just recently) that it appears NO YEARS BEFORE 2007 ARE SEARCHABLE (although TAGGS data in general goes back to at 1991, 1992, 1993 and 1994 under “Advanced.”  That situation is a mess, and that mess doesn’t seem to be accidental.

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I feel that battered women and mothers, not to mention those dealing or associated with them, not to mention UNbattered women who might also be mothers, not to mention many others, are simply unaware of the existence and if so, of the funding, behavior, and most importantly FUNCTIONS of the statewide Domestic Violence Coalitions (Against DV of course).  Probably because most people who get around to showing an interest in the statewide domestic violence (anti-) coalitions tend to still see them as the good guys, although not always delivering “the goods,” (some exceptions, such as Survivors in Action” developed over time).

I think very few people actually understand them as I have come to -as collaborators and active participants in the deliberate dismissal and “failure-to-report” on the extent of opposition funding, that is on the role of HHS itself in sponsoring so much fatherhood rhetoric as the solution to “what ails us” socially — whether it’s crime, poverty, violence, juvenile deliquency, early promiscuity, or any other social condition that sociologists, demographers, and of course psychologists and psychiatrists (those in the mental/behavioral modification fields) might potentially study and report on.

That’s probably because of the post-poned gratification behind looking up and reading tax returns.  i don’t know what it would take to persuade people that this is a habit to develop and exercise REGULARLY, and encourage one’s social circles to also engage in.  I do.  I’ll talk to strangers in public places, do an “elevator speech” (abbreviated) and wrote this blog to start those conversations.

Or at least to inject awareness of this material at least as “excluded from conversations” on-line so that people who have experienced such censorship may recognize it AS censorship when they encounter this info.

I am very concerned about the level of corruption revealed public/private partnering within the State of Ohio throughout this century (and earlier), with the public part obviously involving not only state departments under the Executive Branch, but also (which comes up heavily in this post) public AND private universities.

I already knew that as to child welfare training, it reaches to UCBerkeley School of Social Welfare, which itself connects to the “social-sciencification” of the entire topic and discussions of domestic violence when it overlaps with child abuse or the family courts, in part because of the current (last I checked) Dean of the UCBerkeley School of Social Welfare, Jeffrey L. Edleson, having migrated (back) here from the University of Minnesota, partnering at times with the IDVAAC (Oliver Williams, Ph.D. et al.) in ensuring the man’s view of what is and is not DV is centralized, and at least SOME battered women’s (that it should be handled as criminal / felony instead of diversionary services and “treatments” based on hope and PR) is pretty much a thing of the past, and marginalized.  In addition, no question that AFCC (Association of Family and Conciliation Courts) some of its originators/founders/early revered proponents (such as Meyer Elkin) also historically have had close connections to the same University, campus, and within it, School.

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I see from “TAGGS.HHS.Gov” that a first round of HHS funding to organizations “Coalition Against Domestic Violence” has begun for this calendar year, altering a longstanding grant numbering system (noticeably absent reference to any “principal investigators”), and I also see that what was called* (in recent years and up through 2016) “Family Violence Services and Prevention,” which I blogged at least a few times in 2016, now has Award Number, CFDA#, and Award Titles, under “Injury Prevention and Control” and by way of a different Program Office and Operating Division of HHS.  (*Or at least, grants are now coming to organizations that formerly received the other type of grants in this form).  (See my recent post on “Progressive Language Creep” regarding domestic violence, over the years? The progression (or, re-gression)  can be seen in motion by watching the key organizations involved, and their funding…).

 

 

I discovered this after scrolling through the entire drop-down menu at TAGGS.HHS.Gov looking for a sample under the prior CFDA codes (not shown, even when I had no year or any “select” (filter) marked.  Among these are (primarily, I think) 93591 (Family Violence Prevention and Services/Grants for Battered Women’s Shelters: Grant [*singular]  to State Domestic Violence Coalitions), 93592 Family Violence Prevention and Services/Grants for Battered Women’s Shelters: Discretionary Grants, 93671 (Family Violence Prevention and Services/Grants for Battered Women’s Shelters: Grants to States and Indian Tribes), ALL by way of ACF (Administration for Children Youth and Families) and now 93136 (Injury Prevention and Control Research and State and Community Based Programs)( by way of CDC/NCIPC – National Center(s) for Injury Prevention and Control).

PCADV being one of the larger recipients, you can see all of those CFDA#s (sort by any column) here, as well as on the top left (Report Title) andthat (from start of the database around 1995 until now, 2017 which these results represent)PCADV received $43M of the $201M of “Coalitions Against Domestic Violence”grants a search below revealed (see details on the images for a disclaimer — no way I could get at the full list without ability to key in those CFDA#s…),

 

To Add Insult to Injury Prevention & Services, How about parallel, decades-long CFDA 93910 (NONE of which went, apparently, to the DV Coalitions)

including over $99M to a single grantee with a single Principal Investigator, granted to a State University which, it turns out, has recently been put on notice for its poor finances by the Ohio State Board of Regents?  

(I’m taking a closer look at CSU because of these HHS grants, but here are just two indicator articles about the chosen favorite of whoever was allocating Family and Community Violence Prevention grants, CFDA 93910 over at HHS over the years…)

Dec. 11, 2015, article in Dayton Daily News  by Josh Sweigart (staff writer):

Central State president lives off campus in $485K country club home
Universities spend big on presidential housing, but some barely used for official functions.Central State University President Cynthia Jackson-Hammond lives in a $485,000 house purchased for her last year in a Beavercreek Twp. subdivision located 10 miles from the Wilberforce campus.Central State continues to pay the mortgage on the house — totaling $51,600 a year — as the school is under fiscal watch and its students graduate with more debt **than any other four-year public school in the country.“They’re kicking students out for having financial aid problems and all that, but they’re spending $400K on a house for the president,” said CSU student Jamal Evette as he walked between classes.

**Student Debt for CSU article:

Central State Students carry most student debt in the Nation (Sep. 28, 2015 by Lance Lambert, Staff Writer (Dayton Daily News)Only about one in four Central State University students leave the school with a degree, and those who do graduate leave with something else: more than $39,000 in federal student loan debt — the highest amount in the country for a public four-year college.The U.S. Department of Education earlier this month unveiled the website collegescorecard.ed.gov, where students and parents can compare colleges based on several factors, including debt, what alumni earn and loan repayment rates. ….CSU alums struggleCentral State ranked close to the bottom in every Scorecard category, with only 20 percent of its graduates paying at least $1 of their student loan balance three years after graduation. That’s worse than the repayment rates of all local for-profit colleges.Meanwhile, six years out, about 70 percent of Central State’s alumni earn less than $25,000.  || Of the 10 public colleges with the highest levels of student debt, all are Historically Black Colleges and Universities. ….The data release comes as Ohio Auditor of the State David Yost has a team investigating CSU. The auditor released a report this month saying the university may be letting students take classes despite owing money for tuition and fees for a year or more — possibly allowing the school to get state funding for students who shouldn’t be there.

In addition, in April CSU’s financial health deteriorated to the point that it was the first university in the state to be placed on fiscal watch.

These are common themes, but what concerns me is, what kind of work product is likely to be coming from this source, and has been throughout the duration of these grants.  What’s really going on with the huge discrepancy in this grantee compared to all the others listed under the same CFDA#?

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RE: CFDA 93136…to 93910

If that’s not enough “Family Violence/ Abuse/Injury Prevention (& “Services”)“-type CFDAs under Health and Human Services’ watchful eyesight (??or maybe not so watchful; keep reading), while looking for the above, I ran into a multi-million-dollar (EACH YEAR), multi-year CFDA 93910 (also does NOT display under CFDA Drop-down menus under “Advanced Search” at TAGGS), which stands for (or is at least labeled here) “Family and COMMUNITY Violence Prevention” Grantee.  How — Running the search of this CFDA# and sorting results Large to Small by Column Sum of Awards, I found a public university in Wilberforce Ohio) was getting $11M, $12M, $13M and $17M (MORE THAN ONE) grants, ALL under one Principal Investigator (whose name had three different forms over time at TAGGS), and who, look-ups showed, had a degree from West Carolina University, THIS University and before that, Jamaica, publishing along with probably his wife.  One had a doctorate in Education, the other in Psychology (“surprise, surprise”).  I realize that’s a mouthful, so here are some images….

 

<==As you can see (click the link under colorfully-annotated image with an oval at top-left corner, captioned “Searching CFDA 93910…” to read full-sized) multi-million-dollar grants (most over $10M) were received in 1995, -96, -97, -98, -99, 2000, 2001, -02 (not -03), -04, and 2005.  In fact, two $17M ones on the same day (with a similar but not identical grant#), and among the others, at least two entries with money — but without a DUNS# (defeating a search by DUNS# for a reliable total), and other what I’d have to call (and you should too…) “Anomalies.”

ALL of those awards to this entity (Central State University) (regardless of similar but not identical numbers to Grant D67MP94001 on some of them*) are titled “A Series of HBCU Models to Reduce Minority Male Violence” and The smallest one is $7,400,000.  (HBCU = Historically Black Colleges and Universities)

*Other variations of the same grant# are MPCMP940001 (<==Check it out, $17.3M, but Years two & 3, the CFDA# AND Principal Investigator changed, while grant number, title, and grantee stayed the same — but Years 2 & 3  amounts are “0”) three zeros instead of two) and 5MPCMP94001 (<==check it out; ANOTHER $17.3M, this time, no Principal Investigator Referenced; two zeroes but a preceding “5”). (In those results, I’d selected Column2 header “OpDiv” not “Program Office” as in the larger chart, but it could be run with both.  Program Office is under OpDiv organizationally.

When I ran just the grant “D67MP94001” (not the “close but not that close” numbers, the Search Results (tinuyrl ends in “hglpgf9”) confirmed that the earliest one pre-dates the TAGSS.HHS.Gov data (i.e., there is no “NEW” entry before the 1995 “Non-Competing Continuation” (see column “Award Action Type”)  for this), it also predates the passage of Welfare Reform (1996), and shows a total of $99M grants, more than DOUBLE all that PCADV ever received (during the same timespan reflected by this database).  Sorted by Action Award Date, we see a fourth styling of the same PI’s name (“Ph.D.” instead of “Dr.”).  Here’s the top of it (those search results)”

Those $99M should be added to the $17.3M and $17.3M more listed under “different, sort of” grant numbers just shown above, with links to “TAGGS” database showing them.  So basically here, we are talking around triple the funding of PCADV.  And focused on Minority Males at Historically Black Colleges and Universities….

 

central-state-u-oh-taggs-search-tinyurl-endshglpgf9-total-$99,624,000-(showing) 1995-1997-part-only-of-grant-d67mp94001-under-cfda-93910-pi-rodney-laxley2017feb27-at-1253pm

(that file name a little odd but provides some identifiers, so I left it.  The PI’s last name is “Rodney” not “Laxley,” other sources show.)

Many things concern me about this level of grants to Central State University under this CFDA# and this particular individual, as well as what appears to be a regular co-author and possibly spouse, also graduate of Central State University in Ohio (which I just learned only became a University officially in 2004).

In addition, the connection of the spouse to a Texas “Prairie Valley A&M University” and its new (2002) College of Juvenile Justice and Psychology, not to mention “Texas Center for Juvenile Crime Prevention” in the context of publications like this — and funding like that — I think deserve more exploration (or from our leaders, “explanations!!”).

That probable family connection is seen from the co-authoring of articles (looking to be associated, probably, with the HHS grants funding) by two people with the same last name, and parallel curves (geographically) in their academic history, both working at the grantee university as of having written this article:

 

 

For better understanding of this CFDA 93910 series’ focus, please review H. Elaine Rodney PHd’s resume above, labeled 2/07.  It is over 10 pages long; it lists education, major accomplishments experience publications (mostly articles in publications), presentations, Grants-funded work including several that obviously refer to the grants series I am so concerned about, it references the Texas College and Center I talked about above, and if scanned carefully shows the primary co-authors were Laxley W. Rodney, Tachia (from above abstract), Rupier and a few others.  Link is above, here are four images and some quotes from it, (links to annotations in image captions).  I’m giving this much attention because the existence of this HHS funding stream and TAGGS’ identification of the grants is significant.  The filename (urls) are descriptive of the larger context here.

 

 

 

This CV also names and places (by city) the family conferences in question and claims to be also involved with the grants referencing L.W. Rodney as the principal investigator:

First Annual Family and Community Violence Prevention Conference, Atlanta, GA. October, 1995.

 

You can also see that there’s a major interest in MALES (none whatsoever references women, or uses the word “domestic violence” or “battering”), as well as “ACOA” (Adult Children of Alcoholics).

 

“The Federal Conference on” (Conference title_______)” isn’t specific enough; someone with a PhD should have listed the federal agency/agencies sponsoring and by 2007 with all this academic background and publications, have understood how to enter line items into one’s own resume.  The resume shows someone clearly “in” on the funding streams, but at the same time, the labeling of the grants and the agencies they came from is inconsistent. After listing all the grants, it then lists the federal agencies involved in the grants.  There were also (a few, not many) private foundations involved, such as a Jack and Jill Foundation in Texas, and a “Citizens Scholarship” Foundation in Minneapolis.

 

 Principal Investigator, Laxley W. Rodney C.V. from Prairie Valley A&M University in Texas:

(Images show academic history and that after the time at Wilberforce, ending about 2004, he was then down in Texas and a very few publications (Research Scholarship), not much account of what was done in the 1980s (a resume gap, but that’s understandable for older people), and that in 1969-70 he held some position with the Ministry of Education in Jamaica. The one-pager is undated, but its URL has a date “9-2-2008” which may refer to when it was uploaded and the latest date it might cover, i.e., it may be about 8 years old by now, or more…)

The second from Laxley W. Rodney’s Curriculum Vitae image brings up what the grants were likely about:

 

 

Front-loading what I’ve learned so far might just overload this post, so I’m moving it off for another day, with a few more footprints on that path, here below:

EXPLAIN THIS, please! HHS CFDA 93610, Family and Community Violence Prevention, $99M (Plus-) to Central State U (Ohio) under ONE P.I. since 1995? Dwarfs $43M to PCADV, one of the older and larger Coalitions Against Domestic Violence in the country. (short-link ends -62d, post started 2-26-2017, will become accurately active when published)….”This post explores the grantee institution and a relationship between the grantee and another college in Texas.  The concept includes HBCU models, as well as “Anomalies” on the TAGGS. database itself.”

Not the PI, but a frequent co-author with the same last name, academic (masters, PhD) history and probably spousal relationship, had a C.V. which provided a clue as to the wild acceptance of this form of “Family and Community Violence Prevention” through a connection to Prairie Valley A&M University — in Texas, which has started up a “College of Juvenile Justice and Psychology.”  Its organizational Chart 2015-2016 has many “TBA” positions still….You can also see that this “College” is directly under President, Dean, and a single Ph.D., Dean and “ExecVP of the TCJPC (double check that acronym from the chart!)  Tamara L. Brown.  (This version heavily annotated as I looked up one of the Faculty Members on the Organization Chart):

 

The Texas University’s website also helpfully references a “Read House Bill 1118 Section 70″ (and quotes it– but provides no direct link! and then links to “Texas Legislature On-Line”) as background for the creation of the center, I think… Year, 2002.

 

Current listed “Faculty & Staff” for this “Center” as shown:

Select a Department to view its Faculty and Staff along with their  Research Interests:

Department of Psychology

Department of Justice Studies

Texas Juvenile Crime Prevention Center

These CFDA 93910 grants thus obviously dwarf what was provided ANY statewide coalition under any single grant, it would seem, even PCADV).  Repeat the search with this TINYURL or look for it on  the above annotated image.  There are other recipients — but the next closest grant size shown is ½ million ($500K).