Okies Care

08/20/2025

Happiness Lost

At the core of American values is the “pursuit of happiness.” The text comes from the Declaration of Independence. The country’s founders believed that every human had rights given by their Creator. These rights are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The Declaration states that these rights are “inalienable.” They are fundamental. There is a marginalized group in Oklahoma who do not have these rights. I am not talking about the undocumented or the impoverished. These basic rights have been deprived of Oklahoma’s foster children. There is a shortage of Child Protective Case Workers in Oklahoma. Current case workers are working long hours and still not able to adequately care for Oklahoma’s foster children. The result is child death, child trauma and negative outcomes. This problem is fixable. If we raise the salary of Child Protective Service Caseworkers, it will reduce turnover and help recruit more and better case workers. This is a hard job and many times when given the opportunity, workers transfer to other state jobs. If we raise the salary, we can make a difference with this problem. This problem is fixable, but we need an army. We need volunteers to circulate a petition for a penny sales tax increase. The proceeds from this tax will go to a monthly stipend for CPS workers. We need you and your friends. Help us. Visit okiescare.com.

08/01/2025

We have new volunteers from Wagner, Tulsa and Cleveland Counties.

07/29/2025

We Need Help!

The problem. The problem is there aren’t enough child protective service workers. This is causing exhausted workers from working overtime. The crisis. Children are under-supervised and getting harmed while in the system. The solution. A penny sales tax with the proceeds going to a monthly stipend for Child Protective Service Case Workers. The result. This will reduce burnout. It will slow transfers to other state agencies. The better pay will help the quality of applicants. Our solution will reduce the shortage of case workers. We need your help. To get this on the ballot, we need 2000 volunteers to circulate an initiative petition. Children have died, been injured and traumatized. Can you help? okiescare.com

Douglas Graham

07/04/2025

Foster children have God given rights too. The signers of the Declaration of Independence would not understand how we treat children. Happy Fourth of July.

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

06/30/2025

Notice Them

Most people don’t see them. If you look though you can notice them. You will see them sitting on a row of chairs outside of a court room. You can see them at all hours of the night. They may be stopping at a gas station to go to the restroom or get a snack. They are usually with one other person. If they are young, you will see them holding that person’s hand. You see that one other person is all they have. Their face may be sullen. They are kids but they have seen way more trauma and pain than their peers. They are wards of the state. A judge has deemed them endangered and they are in transit to something else. I say something else because it is not always better and it is not always safer. There really is only one person in their corner. They have traveled with that person. Sometimes they have traveled with them for hundreds of miles. That person is their caseworker. Their caseworkers have many files of many children. The caseworkers in Oklahoma are overworked and have an impossible job. There aren’t enough caseworkers and the ones we do have are stretched to the breaking point. What if we wanted to make a dramatic improvement to the lives of these children that nobody notices? We need to make sure that these caseworkers are the best available. We need to make sure that there are enough caseworkers to supervise the care of these children and keep them safe. Okies Care would like to pass a penny sales tax with the proceeds to go as a monthly stipend to Oklahoma Child Protective Case Workers. This will increase the quality of caseworkers and reduce the shortage of caseworkers. Please visit our website and click on “Become and Okie Warrior”. We need volunteers throughout the state to circulate our petition. We can make a huge difference for these kids. See a link to our website on the first comment. By Douglas Graham

06/16/2025

We have new volunteers from Comanche and Delaware Counties.

06/16/2025

Fix The Bridge

It is kind of like a bridge being out. Our Oklahoma state and county governments don’t always maintain things like they should. Sometimes a bridge just buckles and falls in. A bridge out sign is placed and the road is closed. They raise the money and replace the bridge. The problem with the Child Case Worker Shortage is that everyone knows the bridge is out. They have known for years. Children have died and there may be short lived outrage but the problem is never corrected. There is no sign. No one tells the kids that they better be careful because there aren’t enough people to look out for their welfare. They just leave the bridge out and once in a while a child dies. The harm doesn’t end there. Many children are traumatized or abused and it doesn’t even make the newspapers. Okies Care wants to fix the problem and we have a plan to fix the problem. We need volunteers to help us collect signatures for an initiative petition. Go to our website and click on the Oklahoma Warriors page. We are going to force the state to look at and solve this problem. There is no reason not to fix this bridge. Please share this post. The website address is in the first comment. Thank you. By Douglas Graham

06/09/2025

Momentum is growing in the Okies Care Movement. We have volunteers in place in fourteen counties. We are not there yet. This will be a marathon but people run marathons every day and we expect to win this one. Truth is stronger than hyperbole and the children in Oklahoma Foster Care deserve more.

Okies Care will circulate an initiative petition to raise a one percent sales tax. The proceeds from that sales tax will go to monthly stipends for Oklahoma Child Protective Service workers. This will be called Patience Pay in memory of Patience Thorlton who died on January 15, 2025 while in ODHS custody. The goal is to increase the number and quality of ODHS protective workers. We are asking for volunteers and donations to help protect Oklahoma Children.

06/06/2025

What Things Could Be Better?

Most people when they see plastic bottles on the sidewalk, stop and pick them up. It’s not everyone but I think there are a lot of people who want things to be nicer. There are people that clean up messes and there are people that make them. Which one are you? The shortage of Child Protective Case Workers is contributing to child harm, exploitation and death. You can see the problem if you look. The officials with the responsibility to solve this problem have ignored it. There is a way to go around the bureaucrats and elected officials in order to fix this problem. If you are one of the ones that pick-up trash, we need you. Okies Care wants to pass a 1% sales tax by way of an initiative petition. We need 2,000 volunteers. Please visit okiescare.com and click on “Become and Okie Warrior”. We need you to help protect these kids. You may feel indignation every time you hear a news report of a child that dies or is abused while in foster care. Don’t let that indignation pass. It is not acceptable. Be one of the ones that change it. (Please share) By Douglas Graham

06/05/2025

This all started because Patience Thorlton died as a result of the shortage of case workers. Here are some things that Patience made for her third grade teacher.

06/02/2025