Adam Crum, commissioner of the Alaska Department of Health and Social Services, listens as Gov. Mike Dunleavy talks about the division of the agency into two smaller departments on March 21, 2022, in the Atwood Building in Anchorage. The Department of Health and the Department of Family and Community Services will be reorganized on July 1, 2022.
The other new department will be the Department of Family and Community Services. It will oversee foster care, juvenile justice, Alaska Pioneer Homes and the Alaska Psychiatric Institute. “Over the last year, we have worked extensively with our stakeholder groups multiple times each week to make sure they understood what was going on,” he said at a news conference on Monday.
Anchorage Democratic Rep. Ivy Spohnholz, a member of the committee, said she would have liked to have seen the administration incorporate more public input into the plan than it did.