Happy New Year, everyone!
This Sunday morning at 9:30 a.m., be sure to tune in to Baltimore’s WBAL TV (Channel 11). I’ll be appearing live in studio to recap 2012, which was a terrific year for our department.
More and more Marylanders have turned to the government for help during the recession. Yet even as demand for our services increased, last year DHR had a great year, setting records in all three of our focus areas:
- We have fewest kids in foster care in 25 years
- We increased the amount of child support we collected by $25.1 million and set a record for the most child support collected in Maryland’s history.
- We increased the number of people we moved from welfare to jobs by 16%, the most people we found jobs for in the state’s history. And, 25% of those jobs were for jobs that pay more than $10/hr – another record for the State of Maryland.
Despite these successes, we are by no means perfect. We have a lot of work still to do. But I’m thankful to WBAL’s Lisa Robinson for the opportunity to talk about all our great accomplishments, and I’m looking forward to an equally successful 2013.
-Ted
UPDATE: Here’s a link to the video of the interview:
