STAND. COM. REP. NO. 2669

Honolulu, Hawaii

RE:    S.B. No. 2449

       S.D. 1

Honorable Donna Mercado Kim

President of the Senate

Twenty-Seventh State Legislature

Regular Session of 2014

State of Hawaii

Madam:

     Your Committee on Ways and Means, to which was referred S.B. No. 2449 entitled:

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

begs leave to report as follows:

     The purpose and intent of this measure is to appropriate funds for the continued funding of Project Kealahou, a program that promotes community-based, individualized services in serving at-risk adolescent girls who have experienced significant trauma in their lives.

     Your Committee received written comments in support of this measure from the Behavioral Health Services Administration of the Department of Health, the Judiciary, the Hawaii Youth Services Network, the Community Alliance on Prisons, Family Programs Hawaii, and six individuals.

     Your Committee finds that Project Kealahou is a six-year, federally-funded project developed by the Child and Adolescent Mental Health Division of the Department of Health that provides invaluable support services to adolescent girls who have experienced significant trauma in their lives.  Your Committee further finds that the federal grant that funds Project Kealahou will be phased out.  This measure will allow the project to continue its mission to provide adolescent girls with vital community-based, individualized, culturally and linguistically competent, family-driven, youth-guided, and evidence-based services.

     Your Committee has amended this measure by changing:

(1)  The appropriation to an unspecified amount; and

(2)  The effective date to July 1, 2050, to facilitate further discussion on the measure.

     As affirmed by the record of votes of the members of your Committee on Ways and Means that is attached to this report, your Committee is in accord with the intent and purpose of S.B. No. 2449, as amended herein, and recommends that it pass Third Reading in the form attached hereto as S.B. No. 2449, S.D. 1.

Respectfully submitted on behalf of the members of the Committee on Ways and Means,

____________________________

DAVID Y. IGE, Chair