Good morning everyone. Today is Wednesday October 16th and we are convening our Health and Human Services Committee. I am joined by Council Member Lutke and Council Member Sales is parking her car and so she will be here momentarily. So this is, as I've shared before, one of my favorite times of the Council calendar when we have the opportunity to hear updates from our boards and commissions and committees and I want to begin by thanking all of you truly authentically deeply for your commitment to your work, for your volunteerism, for your leadership. We know how much time and effort that each of you put into this work. We know you don't do it for the for your leadership, we know how much time and effort that each of you put into this work. We know you don't do it for the parking space. We know that you don't do it to be away from your families, but you are. And so it's been a longstanding practice and tradition started by former HHS Chair, Council Member Levin Thal, that we actually convened these meetings earlier than our normal council sessions to provide you all with an opportunity to go about your business during the day. And so that's why we start them a little bit earlier than we normally do. But we are going to review that. And so I request after the two-day session this year, let us know if that's still working for you, because we can obviously make accommodations as necessary. And we now are allowing people to testify both in person and virtually. Both are effective. We of course love seeing your cheerful faces, but just know that that is obviously an option as well. So I will fill a buster for one more minute until my colleague Councilmember Sales gets here and start on sadly a little bit of an ominous note. So we have a big election coming up and I don't want to be partisan. I am going to stick to the facts, but we know that under a previous administration several years ago, there was a significant impact to our social service infrastructure and safety net in our county. And one of the first things that this council had to deal with was the longest government shutdown in the history of our country, which then had a cascading effect on nonprofit organizations who were literally concerned that they weren't going to be receiving the money from the federal grants that they had been receiving for years. So I would encourage all of the board's commissions and committees through your work and let's keep our fingers crossed that we don't have to hope more plan for the worst, but we do need to take that into consideration. We as a body in the event that things don't go the way that I personally would like them to go in November will likely be convening meetings to talk about contingency plans within the county. And I'd encourage all of you to do the same, because this will undoubtedly impact our work in a myriad of different ways, from tracking our federal grants, to looking at policies, everything will unfortunately be on the table. But that's the negative stuff. Here's the positive stuff. Here in Montgomery County, we have remarkable organizations and individuals who are working tirelessly every day on behalf of the communities that you all are advocating for and helping us inform about. And so I want to thank those frontline workers for their selfless dedication as well as all of you. So I think that's about as long as I can go in the filibuster. There it is. Yeah it's got Councilmember Sales. Uh, we, somebody's got to do something about traffic around here. I, I get used to say that all the time as a joke, uh, because, you know, it's the elected official in the room. Um, but thank you so much for joining us, Councilmember Sales. We're going to go up three boards, commissions, and committees at a time. Each of you will have approximately four minutes to provide your testimony. It won't be as hard and fast as normal public hearings. And so if you go a little bit over or you go a little bit under, perfectly okay. After each of the three boards, commissions, and committees have presented, we will pause and give my colleagues and I the opportunity to ask questions and follow up. And then we will go to the next two panels. The next panel will also have three board's commissions and committees. The third one will have four. So we are going to go ahead and kick things off this morning with our intellectual and developmental and disabilities commission represented by Mr. Steve Riley. The Community Action Board, represented by Dr. Jeffrey Johnson. And the Commission on Veterans Affairs and Mr. Michael Wilson will be testifying virtually. So if you could all come forward. And Mr. Riley, once you get situated, you will kick us off this morning. Great. Good morning. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and members of the committee for the opportunity to present the IDD commissions, priorities, top two priorities for 2020, fiscal year 2025. And thank you for the opportunity, and also thank you, and through your colleagues on the council for the attention that you pay and the support that you give to individuals in Montgomery County, who have intellectual and developmental disabilities and their families. Your attention and your work has an impact in improving the quality of lives of people in the county and it's greatly appreciated. I'd also like to thank my colleagues on the commission for their service and pay special thanks to the inaugural officers of our year one existence. Dr. Michael Greenberg, who served as our chair. John Whittle, who served as our vice chair in Jake Dydinsky, who served as our secretary. And also thank Dr. Bridges and the Department of Health and Human Services, especially the aging and disability services team under the leadership of Dr. Patrice McGee for all they do to support individuals with IDD in Montgomery County and their families. As you know, the IDD commission is the new kid on the block. So we are still finding our way. Our first year was our foundational year with all the challenges that are attended to new people coming together for the first time, doing new work, finding our way. But we had some challenges, but those challenges have all been addressed. We appreciate the fact that we have a new staff liaison person, Crystal Brito, who has a deep background in IDD work and with the Department of Health and Human Services. So those challenges have been addressed and we look forward to a productive year. Ahead, turning to the two priorities that you have before you, the first is that we support policies and programs that focus on outreach to underserved and marginalized members of the IDD community. The first point is as the predicate all people who have intellectual and developmental disabilities are underserved and marginalized, but there are some component parts of the IDD community which are even more underserved and more marginalized. And so we want to pay special attention to people who are in those categories and facing those circumstances. And the commission is committed, as I know the county is, to doing that work. We want to support policies such as sensory friendly Montgomery County that will facilitate inclusion of all people with developmental and intellectual disabilities into an active life in the community. That work that we'd like to do this year builds on the 2018 County Government work group meetings on that topic. We heard last year from Culture City and we look forward to working with them and other experts in the field to try to achieve that designation which would complement or track the age-friendly designation that the county has and I'd like to thank members of the aging commission who have been giving us some guidance on how we can move that forward. The second is we support policies and procedures designed to ensure that we have a quality and high quality and robust direct service professional workforce in Montgomery County. So the statement describes that but I just like to give you some lived experience because in addition to being the executive director of Potomac Community Resources, which is a tiny nonprofit here in the county working in the space. I have a parent of a Montgomery County adult resident who has IDD. What are DSPs and what do they do? They provide the ability for adults in the county with IDD to live lives of dignity and inclusion in the community and opportunities. So DSPs help people with IDD, access food, access medicine and health care, transportation, advocacy, ensuring that the people with IDD have a voice that is heard in decision making and personal growth and development. And the DSP workforce is in a crisis, the President's report, President Committee's Commission's report here in the county and state reports all indicate that there's a real crisis in DSP population numbers, quality and training. One factor that the county already does, one step that you've already taken is the supplement that you provide, DD providers, that they then use to increase compensation. The turnover rate for DSPs nationally is 41%. The turnover rate in Maryland is 32%. The Montgomery County turnover is approximately 20%. Terrible, but half the national rate. And the number of factors contribute to that, but in top of the list is the additional money that the council appropriates and the county executive makes available through the supplement to help DD providers pay extra compensation. There's another new development here in the county that's just getting going and I think it's a very exciting one. It's the Academy at Jubilee, Jubilee Association of Maryland, which is a residential service is nonprofit based in Kensington with others others has developed an academy that will train and provide professional development opportunities and career ladders and lattices for DSPs, which I think will be very helpful. So I think that that is a development here in the county that we want to try to capitalize on and through collaborations grow. The academy will initially be focused on Jubilee employees and candidates, but they'll announce very soon that it will be a training will be available to all people who are interested in becoming DSPs. And so the commission is going to work with them, with workforce Montgomery, with Montgomery College, and with MCPS this year to try to assist in rectifying or addressing the crisis in DSPs. So thank you. And thank you. That's all I got. Thank you Mr. Radar. We'll come back to you with questions. We'll get through the next I got. Thank you, Mr. Radar. We'll come back to you with questions. We'll get through the next two presentations. Next up is Dr. Johnson with the Community Action Board. Good morning. Community Chair, Auburnas and Council Member Sales and Lutki. My name is Dr. Jeffrey Johnson and I am the Montgomery County Community Action Board Chair. On behalf of the Community Action Board, the county's federally, state, and locally designated anti-pobody group, I would like to thank you for the opportunity to share our priorities with the HHS committee. The Community Action Board supports the Community Action Agency's work as its governing body. The agency was created in 1968 as part of President Lyndon Johnson's War on Poverty. I provided for each of you a button commemorating the 60th year of Community Action Agency. We've been around a long time. The Community Action Agency is connected to a larger nationwide network of over 1,000 community action programs, all of which have the same underlying mission to reduce poverty and to help people towards the self-sufficiency standard. The Montgomery County Community Action Agency works towards this goal through services and programs, including VITA, our free tax assistance program, the Test Community Action Center, Head Start, Contract Monitoring, and the Community Advocacy Institute, our board's advocacy training program. Thank you, Councilmember Arbornaus, who will be joining us by participating in our community action advocacy institute orientation session this Saturday. As the designated anti-poverty program we lead the county's anti-poverty efforts. This is especially important given the very high high cost of living in our county. The 2023 Montgomery County self-sufficient standard notes that a family of three with one adult, one preschooler, and one school-less child would meet an annual income of $116,864 to cover their basic expenses in the county. Over four and a half times the federal property level. Our prior orgies today address two of our board's key roles as the governing body for the community action agency and advocates for the broader, economically disadvantaged community. Priority one, our priority day for number one is staffing for the community action agency. We are requesting for full time merit staff positions. A community services aid and a program specialist to support our test center. One community services aid will support the navigation team. One program specialist will support the VITA program. These requests are not new. You've heard from me before over the last couple of years. So I'm asking again, for many years, we have requested additional staffing for the agency to support a small but dedicated team Which is struggled to meet the community needs You may not know the direct impact of these staffing needs have had let me share them with you The test community accident center had to reduce its offer flowers in June As was the previous schedule it now only offers morning walk-in hours, four days per week, instead of three, four days in two mornings. Participants are now waiting up to two weeks for an appointment. And the number of people served has decreased. For example, tests addressed 689 service requests in June of 2023, compared with 450 requests in June of this year. Additionally, we recently learned that the state has cut funding for the second generation whole family programs, which our agency relies on to support an opportunity coach at TESS. If we lose the opportunity coach this will directly impact 15 families currently enrolled in the program and will also pose a challenge for the diaper distribution program that the opportunity coach oversees which distributes 200 diapers each month to 35 families. The Navigation Team had been relying on CARES Act funding to support the navigator serving the up county region. When CARES Act funding was exhausted, the agency had to utilize this federal grant to continue the position. With the grant stretched thin, the agency can no longer keep the position beyond the end of the year. This means starting in January, three months from now, the agency can no longer be able to have navigation services in the up county. The impact of losing this navigator will be significant. Last year, this one navigator connected 1,234 families completing over 1,704 client services. Services included, 336 SNAP applications and renewals referring 240 families to full pantries and completing 342 housing assistance applications. The agency's outstanding vital program, which last year served 2,246 households and had a free tax impact of 8 million, 8.6 million dollars has relied on the federal grant funded brokers for many years. Our board appreciates the council's ongoing support for VITA. And thanks again, Councilmember Arbornaus for participating in our EITC Awareness Day event in January. To keep the program strong and reach even more people this tax season and beyond, a full time merit staff position is needed. strong and reach even more people this tax season and beyond a full-time merit staff position is needed. Our board requests an additional $429,112 for the community action agency budget for all four critical positions. We are confident that this added support will strengthen the team and help the agency reach more of our neighbors. Our second priority is the Worker Families Income Supplement. In the spring of this year, 20 local state national organizations express their support for the worker working families income supplement. By signing to our board's letter requesting $17 million so that the supplement would return to a 100% match. We asked the council to consider this request for the workers' family income supplement for fiscal year 26. While we understand this is a considerable budget request, it is worth every penny. Research has repeatedly shown that the earned income tax credits, child tax credits, and tax supports like the worker family's income supplement are some of the best tools for reducing poverty and improving health and education outcomes. Our county is extremely fortunate to have its tax supplement for taxpayers with modest incomes. Please make the worker working family income supplement more robust a more robust tool by returning it to its 100% match of the state EITC. Before I wrap up I'll bore closely follows early care and education developments. As the governing body of Head Start and the Head Start Policy Council, we know that our early childhood education system needs many improvements. We ask the council to continue to support a mixed delivery system opportunities for provider, workforce development, and additional support for smaller child care providers. We look forward to continuing to partner with the HHS Committee and for the full council and hope to have a more in-depth briefing for the council members in the coming months. Thank you for the opportunity to share our priorities today. Thank you so much, Dr. Johnson. Again, we'll get back to you with questions, comments. Great job. Next we will hear from Mr. Michael Wilson on behalf of the Commission on Veterans Affairs and he is joining us virtually. Good morning. Just wanna make sure you all can hear me okay? Yes, we can. Okay, great. Good morning to the committee. Again, I am Michael Wilson. I am a resident here in Montgomery County, Maryland and a 21 year military veteran been serving on the commission since 2021 and now I'm currently served as the chair for Commission. Just want to take the opportunity to once again thank the committee for having me today to represent the commission and it's supported to improve an outcome to veterans and their families here in the county. I want to also just take opportunity for it, especially with thank you to the county staff, Betsy Lucking and Cawley Clem, who continues to provide the Commission superb support. As you all know, the Commission has been very successful over the past 15 years since its exception in carrying out this mission as a advisor to the County Executive and Council advocating for programs as well as services related to veterans and their families. Here today to briefly discuss two of our key priorities for FY 2026, which I believe you all have the complete right up one, but again, just want to take the opportunity to highlight some key points for them. So the first priority for FY 26 is to educate veterans and their families on how to access all federal, state and county funded programs for veterans and their families and advocate for any needed programs and services not funded by the state or federal level and seeking for that assistance at the county level. So just a couple of points on this first priority. Our veteran population here in the county has grown approximately 18% since the last US census. So we're now have approximately 36,000 veterans that reside here in the county. The commission, we want to commend the county for continuing to make it a priority to reduce homeless veterans population through its continued support of the Housing Choice Voucher program. the Housing Choice Validant Program. The Commission would like to see the county continue this annual appropriation to continue to support this effort. We also like to see the county continue to support serving together, which is a program that continues to be a great asset as far as providing information and being a referral point for veterans and their families. Also, we would like to continue to see the support for the Warrior Canine program, this program that lists recovering warriors into a therapeutic mission of learning to train service dogs for other veterans. The commission we also under this priority plan to advocate at the state level for it to establish a veterans home in the county through the VA State Veterans Home Construction Grant program. As some of you might be aware, the only Maryland Veteran home is located in Charlotte Hall, Maryland. This is approximately an hour and a half south of Montgomery County. So again, looking to seek the establishment of a veteran home in the county. Our second priority for this FY26 is the Plan Ancaduct Education and Outreach Efforts for programs and services for veterans and their families. The Commission, we want to commend the County Public Information Office for their strong support and promoting and recognizing the services and sacrifices of our veterans and their family members. We plan to be involved in planning efforts such as Veterans Day, National Veterans and Military Families Month, and November. Veterans Suicide Prevention Awareness and Memorial Day. So again, one of the thank the committee again for allowing me to speak today on behalf of the commission and our two key priorities for FY 26. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for your service. Fabulous job. Great way to get us started. I just will start off with a couple of points and then take myself out of the queue and put myself back into the queue to give my colleagues an opportunity to ask questions for this panel. We'll start with, I'll ask a couple questions and we'll go to Councilmember Lukey, followed by Council under sales, and then we'll flip it when we get to the second panel. So just start with our community action board. I actually had the good fortune and privilege of going to the Lyndon B. Johnson Library, which is located in Austin, Texas on the campus of the University of Texas. And I think he was one of the most underrated presidents in the history of our country. And one of the remarkable things that I remember from that visit was hearing the unedited audio of him having conversations with Dr. King about the development of the Civil Rights Act and the pushback and the pull. It was really fascinating and just extraordinary. So I'm happy you elevated that and gave us that context and background. It's just another example of the legacy of what was pretty great president. So I really appreciate you highlighting the self-sufficiency standard. This is is rearing its ugly head, particularly in the area of food insecurity. We know that there are tens of thousands of county residents who are not eligible for, for example, federal SNAP benefits, but that are experiencing significant food insecurity. So I think the number that you all have enumerated is something we're going to have to continue to highlight and really explain to our average resident and citizen who is not aware that this is occurring in our own backyard and what that means. So look forward to working with you. And I appreciate your continued advocacy for the additional full-time employees. We know there's a lot of work that needs to be done in a variety of categories and areas. I would urge you to continue, I know you already have, work with the executive branch. It's always easier for the executive to propose any additions to his team than it is for the council to place those positions within departments and agencies. It can be done, it has been done, there's certainly precedence, but as a body, we more often than not yield to the county executive because they're in a better position to know what the needs are on the ground. But we will certainly continue to support the addition of those positions. So thank you so much for that Dr. Johnson. I'll have one more question or comment and take myself out of the queue. The, I really want to thank you all so much, Rylee, for highlighting the good news, which is we're in a better situation than most other jurisdictions with regards to our DSPs, but it also highlights why we can't ever go back to a point where we're not providing that supplement because it would be catastrophic if we did not. And so we have to, as a bare minimum, continue to hold the line and see what we can do to enhance those opportunities. I'm also very, and I know all of us are interested in seeing how we can expand more professional development opportunities and more jobs, and that's something that I look forward to working with you all as well. I'll now yield to Council Member Lutke, followed by Council Member Sales, and then get back in the queue for one more question. Thank you and thank you all for all that you do. I and to hop onto what Chair Albernolce was just saying with respect to our providers in the DD world. You know in addition to the comments that have already been made and that you've highlighted also wanting to make sure we're doing our best job not just here but across the state in making sure the quality is more evenly provided, right? I think we have an amazing cohort here that's not necessarily the case across the state and our developmental disabilities community deserves to have standardized quality of care and professional development is a critical part of that. So I think that that's something I'm very attuned to. And certainly with the SNAP and or SNAP gap problems that are significant and I know a number of folks in that space have heard me say repeatedly. The goal is to have most of the money going out the door to the people who need it and less of it on the administrative side of things, right? But we have to acknowledge that the process is complex and therefore requires a great deal of administrative oversight and processing just to obtain the benefits that folks should have. Knowing the fiscal constraints that the state is under and that obviously the CARES Act money was here and was temporary and was never intended to be long term. We're in a challenging place trying to find how to marry doing what's best moving forward, with knowing we don't have the resources with which to do it. And so my ask of everyone is to try to think really creatively about who else is in the space and how to leverage combining of efforts. We're all going to have to get incredibly creative in how we make things work moving forward, but we can't not do the things. So that's a tough challenge. And we have a great number of really amazing providers who work in this in the social services space across the county who all have hearts and minds in exactly the right place. And so my ask to everyone, this isn't just for all of you, but as we like to say for the millions listening at home, is that everyone start to talk to one another better, more collaboratively, to help figure out how to work best towards the better vision of the whole, knowing that we're gonna have financial pressures and knowing that the state's not going to be bailing us out and we're unlikely to get a bail out from the federal government again, the likes of which we had during COVID. So we need to be incredibly methodical about that. And I am always open to helping whenever because we do have significant needs in the community and those are undeniable. So thank you all for all that you do and keep doing. And we are here for you whenever you need us. Thank you. Thank you, Council Member Sales. Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you to all of the chairs and board members that will be testifying before us. As a former board member with the Counties Committee Action Board. I know how important these boards committees and commissions are and the time that is, it takes to prepare the agenda to have the meeting and then to come up with only two priorities, knowing that the laundry list of priorities can go on and on, especially with the three committees we've started with. And so just last week, we celebrated with a proclamation honoring the Main Street facility that now is home to a lot of our residents who are trying to navigate an independent life. And talking with some of the workers that are there who are so proud of the work that they are able to do is so important that we find more opportunities to connect our IDD community with workforce development opportunities. And so, whatever we can do to support the efforts with the Office of Workforce Development, and now that we have an office of small business support, it would be helpful for us to see if we can even put out a survey with some of our small businesses to learn more about the needs and willingness for some of our businesses to employ our residents with IDD just to support getting the word out about opportunities for the community. And for our community action board, I was listening to the radio and they were talking about the earned income tax credit. And it's because of CAB and VITA services and the education, the free tax prep that goes around that generates so much money for our residents who are having a lot of trouble making ends meet. And so whatever we can do to support, I know that in previous years you've used grants to do the VITA program, but that's millions of dollars that's left on the table if our residents don't understand how to properly file for their taxes. So please let us know if there's any letters of support that we can provide to encourage our federal partners to support these very important programs. And then Senator Van Holland was here yesterday and thinking about our veterans affairs. I was proud. I think I can't believe how long ago was it when we opened the Satellite Center off of 270 just to ensure our veterans here in the county have access to resources locally. And so thank you for all the work that you're doing. We also want to continue to support the Warrior K9 program as well. And so looking forward to seeing the County Executive's budget and what he recommends in light of these priorities. Thank you, Senator. Thank you. I'll just get back in the queue quickly. So I wanted to lift up Mr. Wilson and thank you so much again for your testimony. The issue of behavioral health and the promotion of suicide prevention. So I really appreciate that as a recommendation, it remains a huge challenge and we of course are having a fentanyl crisis and a substance abuse crisis and sadly many of our veterans are self-medicating to address the pain that they're obviously going through. So I just wanted to give you an opportunity to talk a little bit more about that highlighting that as a priority and what you're seeing that that's working if you're familiar with with different initiatives and maybe what more can be done. Yes, thank you for that question. What you point now is definitely a major concern and continues to be a concern amongst veterans. So at the moment, I don't have specific information on programs that is hoping to address that matter specifically. the commission has been engaged with organizations with regards to this topic. So I can certainly, at a later point, provide you some more details with regards to that topic. Thank you. I appreciate that. And it's helpful to us too, just generally among all the boards and commissions, when you identify programs and initiatives, and some of you do within your testimony, but you are subject matter experts in sharing that information with us, particularly as we go through the difficult budget process would be terrific. Great, well thank you all very much for your testimony and your commitment. We are now gonna move on to the next panel, and we are going to hear from our commission on people with disabilities represented by Ms. Tanya Gilchrist who will be testifying virtually as well as the commission on juvenile justice and we have both Ms. Carlotta Woodward and Ms. Melissa Goman. And then we also will be hearing in this panel from our commission on children and youth represented by Shane Tate's Pimentel Pimentel And we will start virtually with Miss Gilchrist Can you hear me? Okay, yes Yes we can okay great great thank you my name is Tony Gailcoreston and the newly appointed chair of the Commission on People with Disabilities. Thank you so much to the County Council HHS Committee or this opportunity to submit and discuss priorities on behalf of the Commission on People with Disabilities. Transportation and housing are vital to county residents with disabilities. And I believe you have the more detailed list of priorities. So just do an overview. We the disabled of Montgomery County rely on transportation options to be able to live, work and play in the county. The installation of bicycle lanes and floating bus stops prevents people with disabilities from independently maneuvering their communities. Adding sidewalks near schools provide safety from vehicles rather than having pedestrians with disabilities traveling on the street. And enforcing existing accessible parking laws is necessary so that disabled residents can participate equally in their community. Locating accessible, affordable, and integrated housing is an extreme challenge for people with disabilities in our county. The commission and people with disabilities recommends that designed for life have an easier, more user friendly application process to increase its utilization and the commission recently submitted a letter with suggestions. Requiring about 20% of MPD use to be accessible would help to improve the availability of affordable and accessible housing. And we also support the heart program providing home modifications to seniors and people with disabilities who have a limited income. And we support our sister commission, the IDDC, and their priorities that they recently mentioned. Our county residents with disabilities should have the same options and choices in housing and transportation as those without disabilities leading to more equality for the disabled and the county. And I want to express incredible gratitude to Betsy Luke-Kin and all HHS. We look forward to working with you on this priorities. Thank you very much and it was good seeing you in person the other day, Miss Gilchrist. Thanks for your service. All right, next we will hear from our commission on juvenile justice. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and members of the committee. My name is Carlotta Woodward and I am here with my co-chair. We both chair the Montgomery County Commission on Juvenile Justice, Melissa Goman, who is and the county council and the county court and state legislators on matters concerning juvenile justice and the needs of juveniles. We are very lucky to have wonderful members on our commission who have worked extremely hard and continue to work extremely hard with respect to juvenile justice and the needs of our young people in the community. I do want to just thank Diane Ligger, who is our program manager, who works for the county, who is absolutely phenomenal and does so much for us in this commission and other parts of this county. One of our priorities that I'd like to speak about first is meeting the needs of young people for mental health services. Research indicates that the majority of justice involved youth have mental health challenges. Therefore connecting children with high quality mental health services is critical to the prevention of justice involvement and treatment of children who are of system involved. A recent report by the Maryland juvenile justice monitoring unit states that there are children who need specialized mental health services who are being placed in detention environments because of the lack of accessible, effective, community-based residential, and non-residential mental health services. And that this is a statewide problem. This is highly inappropriate and obviously harmful for our young people. Our commission has learned that county jails do not have the resources to provide mental health, education, or other vital services to juveniles who have been charged as adults and are being held in our jails. Providing an immediate intervention even on a short-term basis to these young people is essential to achieving positive future outcomes for them. Not serving them is, frankly, unacceptable to our commission. The second priority that our commission is looking into for this fiscal year is meeting the needs of young people for substance use treatment. We know that drug use remains an issue among our young people, and it is a prevalent problem of our justice involved youth, and for our youth that are not justice involved. Many minor soup and charge with other offenses have significant substance abuse or addiction issues that haven't been addressed. While the county has been working hard in prevention, education and treatment, there remains a significant deficiency, namely the lack of an inpatient treatment program in Montgomery County. We are so fortunate that county officials have arranged temporary access to Montgomery County youth in a facility in Baltimore. However, as a county, as big as Montgomery County, we should not have to rely on out of county facilities to meet the needs of our residents even on a temporary basis. Specifically, our young people dealing with substance use issues. And I will turn it over to my co-chair for our last priorities. Thank you Carlotta and thank you council members. So the last priority I'm going to talk about is the need for restorative approaches and on our Mike Femre County public schools. The commission recognizes and applots the commitment of MCPS to restorative approaches in the schools. However, there's much more to be done to achieve the benefits of these approaches throughout the whole school system. Because the modest county investments to date, particularly in hiring full-time restorative justice specialists, MCPS has not been able to establish mature restorative programs in very many of its schools to date. The commission supports investing in and implementing whole school restorative approaches and as many schools as possible. This would have a demonstrated potential in this approach for improving school climate, reducing chronic absenteeism, substance abuse, disruptive behavior, and the need for discipline. And I'll just mention that we have been furthering our work through the use of four subcommittees. One is focused on promoting policies, practices, and services to interrupt the school-to-prison pipeline, and support young people at risk of justice system involvement. One, some committee is focused on promoting high quality and timely mental health, drug treatment, therapeutic, and educational services for all system involved in at risk youth. We have a legislative subcommittee focused on state legislation and a subcommittee exploring the idea of a children's center. Thank you for your time. Thank you very much. Next we will hear from our commission on children and youth. Thank you. Good morning and thank you to the committee for this opportunity to represent the commission on children and youth. Since our establishment in 1979 the commission on children and youth has advised county council, county executive, the Department of Health and Human Services, and the Board of Education on Policies that support Children, Youth, and Families. And we continue that work. We also serve as a forum for youth voices and community discussions as mandated by the County Code. So this focus has forced us and helped us to commit to deepen our impact through our annual policy recommendations and fostering community engagement and enhancing data collection. We continue to strengthen initiatives like our youth commissioner led, youth having a voice roundtable which has held annually since 2008. And that informs a lot of our data collection directly from our young people and their experiences. We are a group that prioritizes collaboration of parents, of agency members that are youth serving agencies as well as individuals who have professional experience serving children in youth. And with that, our recommendations last year, they spoke very clearly to an increased need for LGBTQIA youth to have greater supports within our schools and different strategies that have been proven to increase their mental, social, emotional, and physical well-being. We hope that those recommendations go far and wide across agencies, but speak directly to our NCPS students. And we also spoke very clearly about what our youth commissioners felt was a dearth of civic engagement opportunities and education opportunities. They felt that the opportunities that they have been afforded weren't widely publicized, also did not speak to where young people were, and they were limited in nature. So they pushed us to one look at how we, you know, support our youth commissioners as well and we're taking a deep dive into an internal review of our own policies of whether our, our own commission has barriers to participation as well. And moving forward, we also gave strong recommendations around career readiness for young people as well. So not only do we want them civically engaged, but we also want them career ready. Not just exploring careers, but able to graduate and be able to be employable at the point of graduation from our school systems. So you'll see those recommendations in our last year report. We turn our attention this year. Again, focusing on the condition of our young people, their physical well-being and their mental well-being. Our two priorities this year will be focusing on online safety. What are the safeguards, the education, the policies across systems and across our agencies that are protecting young people while they're using not just online resources, but technology in general. And have we done enough to inform our families about what the protection should be and how do we support our young people within our systems, even when we're asking them to engage with these devices. And we're also looking at what is the education of young people akin to our commission on juvenile justice? What is the education about prevention and intervention resources for substance use disorder, specifically our youth commissioners are interested in Naloxone education. They feel that it is available, but it's not expansive enough to really make the impact that it could be making. And that can to the concern about substance use disorder rehabilitation, where are the rehabilitation opportunities that are specific and targeted to young people, knowing that those resources are very scarce, and that young people are in non-use serving systems, trying to look for supports. So we will be diving into those strategies and looking across jurisdictions to see where models are that we can lift up, where we can start with what we've already have in place. I think we've made some headway and made some inroads to put these issues on the table and have some initial strategies, but we know that we can go further. And then where are their resources to help us expand our strategies? We do know that there's litigation that helps with bringing resources to the county into the state that is looking at online safety for young people and how we might be able to leverage those resources for strategies here. So we look forward to delving into this with our young people. We currently have 14 members and we have about 13 vacancies. We have one youth commissioner right now. A part of our priorities last year looking at those various to youth participation, we are looking at how we incentivize young people to maintain their consistent participation and their motivation and making sure that our bylaws don't just speak to supporting the adult commissioners, but they speak to supporting the youth commissioners that well, so you may see some recommendations for changes that increase SSL opportunities for our youth commissioners, but they speak to supporting the Youth Commissioners that well. So you may see some recommendations for changes that increase SSL opportunities for our Youth Commissioners at the very least so that they can be involved. Thank you. Thank you very much. Before I go any further, I want to acknowledge Dr. James Bridgers, who's in the audience and thank him and his HHS team for their work always. So I'll just make one quick point, and then I'll get back in the queue. On online safety, I've had conversations with Chair Joando about doing a joint session with our Education and Culture Committee. I think you can connect this in some ways, both directly and indirectly, to the cell phone policy debate that's going on within our school system right now. So more to come on that, but Miss Yao, I would love to have the commission represented in some way during that presentation to give them an opportunity to expand on what we know as a critical issue is the. We're all parents up here. We get it. And these are untruthed territories. I will turn it over to Council Member Sales, followed by Council Member We get it and these are untruthed territories. I will turn it over to Council Member Sales, followed by Council Member Lukey, and then I'll get back into the queue. Council Member Sales. All right, thank you. Again, Mr. Chair, and thank you again to our panelists. Getting started with our commission on juvenile justice. Thank you so much for your presentation. I've been working with the Office of Legislative Oversight and our Tebs, which is our technology department to create a GIS map of resources for our youth specifically highlighting mental health resources and recreational activities. And then I reached out to the Department of Correction and Rehabilitation to learn more about the mental health services we provide in our jails because I had a constituent reach out. Her son was taken out of the emergency room where he had stayed for an extended period of time and he was put in jail where he did not receive any mental health resources. And so we're still trying to learn more about the mental health support services that are available to our incarcerated residents. But I'm glad that we are making every effort to find a room. Unfortunately, Baltimore is the closest because the facility that was in Frederick has been shut down that was working with our youth and so we'll continue to advocate at the state and federal level. This is a national issue and we need to have resources readily available for our young people and our adults who are dealing with challenging mental health issues. So thank shedding light on that. I also wanted to follow up with our commission on people with disabilities. Really appreciate you raising the issue about the transportation needs and accessibility. It's one of my top priorities in my smart agenda and just wanted to know if there are any specific areas in the county that you would prioritize or that the commission has discussed as a higher need for transportation safety and are you ranking the areas by any sort of measure? Thank you. We've discussed, so with downtown Silver Spring as well as Bethesda, those areas related to transportation, we have not ranked though. We have a ranked area throughout the community. All right. And housing, affordable housing, access to housing is always a challenge. Have you determined what the need is or? We haven't done a specific needs assessment, anything like that. But affordability and accessibility is huge to us. So many residents with disabilities receive social security benefits, which is very minimal. But having the same choices as others is important. So a variety of income, there's a variety of incomes, people desperately. But those who are receiving Social Security benefits, of course, have the heart of the community. that there's a variety of incomes, what people despair in these. But those who are receiving social security benefits, of course, have the hardest time and find it in finding housing. And then when you add on accessibility to it, it's nearly impossible. Yeah. Because I know houses have to be retrofitted. Rent tools. Yeah, because I know, you know, houses have to be retrofitted. Rentals and so we should be looking into what the supply is, knowing that there's already a shortage of supply for the average renter and someone with need, someone who needs accommodations is even more incredibly challenging so definitely we'll follow up and look into that and lastly the Commissioner on Children and Youth thank you so much for raising the issue about the dearth of career readiness and civic engagement opportunities. I started the Smart Youth Advisory Council because there are limited opportunities if you're not part of SMOP or the SGA at your school. And then of course, you know, all the other commitments and responsibilities our young people have. But Narcan continues to be an issue that comes up regularly, mental health challenges. And so I know that our Health and Human Services Department, our Public Health Officer, Dr. Davis, has been working a lot with our youth and Narcan education. I know that there's even talks of Narcan vending machines and they are also having Narcan in, I believe, our fire stations. So my backgrounds in public health, so prevention is always key, but for the kids who are already in the thicket things we need interventions. And so I believe we just approved a grant last fiscal year for intervention, but I'm not sure about the prevention efforts that are being made. So we will definitely follow up and look forward to the upcoming youth having a voice roundtable as well. And before I turn it over to my colleagues, this is the 18th year hosting this annual event. Can you share how the round tables have been used to address the concerns that have been raised by the students? Yes. So we have always invited our elected officials to be the audience for that. So we're hoping that their direct voices and their lived experience become a part of the data that's being gathered as we're making decisions. But directly for the commission we use a lot of that as lived experience, qualitative data that goes into our recommendations. So it's stacked right up there with the research. When our young people are saying this is my experience I haven't heard about this. I don't have access to this. And so you see it weaved into our report. All right. I hope it's on my calendar. Thank you everyone. Yeah, and just to uplift the success story from that session. It's about six or seven years ago, but one of the students gave a compelling argument that we needed to do away with the time frame that had been established for free right on immediately after school. And Councilmember Glass was on the panel when that discussion was happening and he introduced legislation later that year making it free all the time. So there are success stories. It's worth our time to go. Councilmember Luki. Thank you so much to unpack here of things that are near and dear to me. First for our commission on disabilities. I thank you for continuing to elevate the concerns about residential access. And I know that we have one project in my district that did open, but we have another coming on board shortly. And that was the laureate that was done by UIA and the Housing Opportunities Commission where all of the units, and there were many that were deeply affordable, right? Because it was an H.O.C. related project, but they were all designed specifically to accommodate individuals with disabilities from the outset so that you don't have to go back and do retrofitting and that's something that I think folks who aren't living with the disability day in and day out aren't cognizant of until all of a sudden they have a need for that level of accommodation and it might only be aren't living with the disability day in and day out, aren't cognizant of until all of a sudden they have a need for that level of accommodation. And it might only be temporary for them, but they don't become self-aware until it happens. And so having a project like the Laurier, where that's just the standard, makes it much easier for everyone. And again, doesn't reduce or eliminate choice because everyone in the building has the same choices and the same availability to the same accessible spaces. So more of that, please. We need much more of that. substance use disorder with our teens and adolescents in particular. And having been a child who went to elementary school in the 80s during the war on drugs and that that Friday commercial just did not. And I'm sure it surprises nobody here that I was a really hardcore goody goody two shoes, rule following kid. And I hated sitting through those programs because they were all about coming from a punitive and or morality standpoint as opposed to science. And for me, if you're talking to kids about these issues, what they really, if you really explain it, not in the, don't do that. Because that's not, that doesn't work with normative adolescent behavior, they don't do that. What does work is talking about it from a science perspective. And they'll all go after you've talked to them and go look it up on here and look up some more and go down that path some more about what they said. And they're going to try to validate or try to disprove what you said because they are teenagers. But it is sticky and then it lends itself more to subsequent interactions with their classroom teachers, whether it's their biology teacher or their chemistry teacher or what have you. So that would be an ask of mine is that MCPS and our positive youth development external community partners are taking that approach towards addressing these issues with kids in ways that get to the why might you want to try the thing? What is going on in you that's making you feel a certain way? So you start to become more self reflective about what those things are in the first place, which also coincides with our behavioral health issues within our teen and adolescent population as well. With respect to restorative approaches, which I am wholly supportive of and appreciated the statewide approach to that many years ago that put that in place that made school systems have to adopt that. What I experienced in my prior work at the state and I'm still experiencing as a parent of four kids at MCPS is it didn't get rolled out uniformly across the 24 jurisdictions in the state. And for better or for worse, and I think it's for better, restorative approaches, along with many other things we do with teens, it has to require ongoing work. It is tedious. It requires ongoing commitment. So it's not a, well, I did the restorative approaches. Now I'm done. It's not and it can't be. But there seemed to be here and I'm hoping it's been course corrected. Almost like a box checking exercise within MCPS. And where the children who may have been impacted by the adverse conduct felt compelled to participate, which they should not have been. You can still engage in restorative approaches with fidelity without having the victim forced to participate. And the victim shouldn't be forced to participate. Somehow that got lost in the process here. Because you can still do educational growth-minded intervention without having the victim involved. And you should, because that growth-minded educational intervention is part of, again, keeping the child who may have done something wrong, teaching them. It's educational, and it's reminding them that they are part of that school community and a valued member of that community and you want them there, you just want things to not repeat, and you want it to be better and how do we be better and how do you show that to your peers too and your teachers and that's okay, we're here to learn. So I think pushing on that some more within MCPS in terms of the the the stickiness of restorative approaches in a more constant and consistent way would be great. For online safety I know I used to do a presentation and I did it once. I've only done it once since I've been in office, but I used to do it for my old job and I would do it as part of MCPS's B-WELL 365 initiative called Healthy Communities Healthy Schools. It was specifically about social media use and sort of some of the things that occur there and how you can get into a sticky wicket, right? And so I'm happy to continue doing that whenever asked, but I also think we need much more of that within the school's greatest pleasure from that was a child who was not related to me came up after or it's last time and brought me an ice cream sandwich. So I was very excited. That's winning. If they give you an ice cream sandwich, you did a good job. And then for our juvenile justice work, and I know it's been a long road and you all have done amazing work and collaboration again with partners not just here in the county but across the state. And we're days away from the new law going into effect. And I have to say I'm kind of skeptical. I'm sure you guys are too, a little bit about how much fidelity they will be to that getting done. And I recently was going, well, I wonder what training materials the Department of Juvenile Services has used to retrain all their staff because you can have a full and robust even though I know we don't we have gaps in our services that we can refer our folks to our children too but even if we had that if it like if it the outset it, that first interaction with the intake officer, there's not fidelity to what is being asked of them to do, then the whole network after that doesn't get to see it, doesn't get to know it, that child doesn't get the help they need and the interventions that, you know, juvenile, that juvenile justice system is a diversion from the adult justice system. That's why it was created. But if it's not working, it's not working. And the lawyer and me went, well, those are public records. So somebody could request them. So I'd be curious to see if anybody ever does request the DJS materials since they are public records created by a governmental body. What they've used now since we are days away and if they don't exist yet, we have problems. And while I know I talk extensively and my colleagues have had to sit through my explanations of the sequential intercept model as an analytical tool for assessing services and needs that is for the adult population. However, there is a parallel other system for the youth and adolescents and I think it would benefit us to apply that and look through that lens with our youth services as well. And you could even use the SIM mapping that the state did for the county for the adult services as a roadmap for how to map what is there for the youth and how to enhance communication and collaboration. But of course, I know all of you are at at the mercy of one department that is a state agency doing its job. And I certainly appreciate that. But I thank you for all that you do and the constant attention you're putting on these issues. It's complex work and it's people centered work and I know all your hearts are in the right place and we can do better for our kids and thank you for all you do. Thank you so much, Councilmember Lutky. So I want to start with Ms. Gilchrist. Thank you so much for your testimony. There are two issues that you highlighted that I want to assure you we're going to follow up on. One is the concern regarding the installation of signals that are supposed to indicate to pedestrians, where to cross on the new bike lanes and that the few that have been installed appear to not be functioning or being turned off. Is that you're hearing that from members of the commission or members of the community or where you're getting the feedback? Both members of the commission and members of the community or where are you getting the feedback? Both members of the commission and members of the community, especially individuals who are blind or visually impaired, are having, are just not being able to maneuver their community because of that. I appreciate that. It's just can't go out. No, I can't. So we we will certainly and I will work with my colleagues on making sure we follow up with with DOT on this. The other issue and I don't have a solution but I think it definitely is something we're going to have to talk more about in the future because I've been this is the third or fourth time. I've heard this just in the last few months. Is the issue of accessible parking spaces. There were never enough of them to begin with, but now as members of our aging community are accessing more of them, which is of course necessary and important. It's also causing a significant concern for other individuals with disabilities who then can access them. So I think that is something that we're going to have to look at in terms of the overall adequacy. We've been pushing hard to get people out of cars as a matter of general principle, but for a number of our residents, that's not possible. And so it's something that we're gonna have to follow up on. So thank you for uplifting those issues in particular. And then the design for life, I just texted my team, that's something that we wanna look into more as well. We're having lots of conversations right now about aggressively pursuing policies that create more housing options and opportunities. I've spoken to the Builders Association about this and it actually makes economic sense for them to put in design for life components within construction of new homes. It makes them more valuable, frankly. But that is something I want to explore further. So thank you for that testimony. And then on to the Commission on Juvenile Justice. So on restorative justice, thank you for uplifting that particularly the work of MCPS. So I am on the Education and Culture Committee. We've had three sessions just this year alone talking about this and nagging at me concerning me, Fidelity is a good word that was used by Council and Marlouki. I'm starting to worry if we don't implement this with Fidelity, not only will it not really resolve the issue, it could actually create more problems because it's leading to some confusion and the schools that have implemented it well have clearly demonstrated how effective it can and should be, but it requires the full buy-in of the administration of those schools, the principal, the vice principals, everyone. So the next time, Missyah, we have a conversation about this. I'd love to invite Representative from the Commission to join us so that we can hear from you all. The other thing that I need help on, we need help on is how to describe this to our broader community, right? So people that are in the space, when you say restorative justice, they know what you mean. They know the practice and how important it is, but your average parent, county resident may not. And there's been some pushback from some of the parent community who feel that it's making it easier for some students to get away with, you know, illicit behavior, which is of course not the case. But we have to dispel that myth and I think finding the right language. I'd love to work with you all on that in the future and have you all make recommendations to us on how to talk about this in a way that people can digest and process. And then lastly, with regards to the Commission on Children and Youth, I would love to, again, invite you once we have this online safety discussion to talk more about that. And this is broadnessy out, but I think there are a number of vacancies within our boards and commissions and we just followed up with our colleagues and the executive branch to find out, you know, who directly is responsible and it's, there's some good work going on, but it used to fall under just one office, one individual with a staff and it no longer does. So I would like to see where we are just generally on vacancies and see what we can do to help. Make sure that they're filled because we need this work to continue. So thank you all very much. All right, we will now move on to our final panel. Thank you. I love that. Our final panel. We have the Commission on Child Care, which is going to be represented by Brandon Howard who will be providing his testimony virtually. We have Mr. David Engel representing the commission on aging and we have Hannah Shaw pinch hitting today representing the citizen review panel advisory group and lastly we have Mr. Anthony Carter representing the board of social services. Yes, yes, Hannah's doing oh Hannah sorry you're doing the board of social services Yes, yes, Hannah's doing oh Hannah. Sorry. You're doing the board of social services And I know councilmember Luki also will have some comments because she she serves on that board as well so but we will start with the Commission on child care Great, good morning. I'm Brandon Howard on co-chair of the committee on child care Can you hear me? Yes, if you can just pause one'm Brandon Howard. I'm co-chair of the commercial child care. Can you hear me? Yes. If you can just pause one second, Miss. Yeah, I wanted to chime in. Sure. Oh, sorry about that. Hmm. Where is that? Oh, Miss Stacy McNeil. Yes, from the citizen review panel advisory group. I had Miss Shaw in there. Sorry about that. I'm going to thank you all today for the opportunity to present the mission and the top two priorities for the commission on child care. I also want to thank our program manager, Erin Stillwell. She's the program manager for early childhood services and the county executive and county council on the development implementation and effectiveness of government policies, programs and services that enhance community support for quality, affordable and accessible Chowcare. The commission will advance its mission in fiscal year 25 through a focus on the following priorities. Number one is to develop recommendations and line with county efforts to support the county's child care system with a specific focus on equitable access and affordability for families. And number two is identify best practices to improve, recruit, retain and expand the evolving early care and education workforce by hosting collaborative events, collecting data, and providing recommendations to inform and guide stakeholders. Last year, just as FYI, we held our first listening session where we invited all the Maryland Early Childhood Advisory Councils, Howard County and Arundel Prince George, the St. Mary's Unanimate. We also invited similar organizations for DC, Northern Virginia, with a goal of hearing about those pressing issues in child care and to discuss ideas for best addressing those challenges. And as you can imagine, all sorts of things came up, everything from improving pay for child care providers, keeping child care providers in the child care profession, the balance of doing those things while making and keeping childcare affordable for families. And so we got a chance to at least discuss those items, try to find best practices, things that people are doing that were hopefully effective, just to share some ideas in ways we could do things to help provide some ideas for Montgomery County. And I just wanna thank you all again for the opportunity to present today and the opportunity to represent the Montgomery County Commissioner Chalker. Thank you. Thank you very much. Next we will hear from Mr. David Engel representing the Commission on Aging. Yeah, you're good. Good morning, Chair Alburnas, Councilmembers Luki, Councilmembers Sales and Dr. Bridgers. On behalf of the Commission on Aging, we express our sincere gratitude for the unwavering support of the County Council and the Department of Health and Human Resources. Your dedication to our mission has empowered us to serve the aging population more effectively. Your support has enabled us to achieve significant milestones in improving the quality of life for our senior residents. For example, our advocacy contributed to the county's launch of Access Hears program. A groundbreaking hearing health intervention program funded by ARPA, this program provided hearing devices to over 400 low income seniors, enhancing their quality of life. Because it was ARPA funded, it was a short term program that was very effective and we urged the county to continue funding this essential initiative in future budgets. As we strive to create a community where aging is celebrated, we remain committed to addressing the needs of our elderly residents. We believe that by focusing on our 16 primary priorities, we can not only improve the well-being of our aging population, but also benefit the entire community. While the county executive has pledged to expand aging services' communications through the expansion of the public information office, and we support that. We still advocate for the creation of a dedicated communications team within aging and disability services. This team would coordinate our innovative volunteer ambassador program, which you have the executive report on, and reach out to our diverse community, support our library outreach program, promote our valuable senior services and programs and collaborate with the Minority Health Initiatives. I hear Council Member Sales wears the data in my mind all the time now since last year. And in our report, we were very specific with our ambassador program. Our volunteer commissioners went out to dozens of locations throughout the county and provided presentations on county services and programs to over 600 residents. So this was also a listening session and was very effective, but we need the help of those paid employees in the county to help implement a program like that throughout. So it's very evident that that was very helpful. Nursing home oversight continues to be a top priority of the commission on aging. Our most vulnerable 4,000 plus residents in the county remain at risk due to the dysfunction of the Maryland Department of Health and the Office of Healthcare Quality. The commissions on Aging's numerous letters and pronouncements pointing out the lack of performance by the state, since they terminated the Memorandum of Understanding with Montgomery County has seemed to fall on deaf ears until this past General Assembly session when Senator Ben Kramer introduced a bill to pave the way for delegation of the responsibility back to the county. The bill did not pass, but we still support reinstating the Memorandum of Understanding. There are now conversations about that with the state through the county of health and human services and their representatives. But the county does still need your support to put the pressure on the state level. There needs to be a funding mechanism to put the program back in place. It is not a quick fix so it needs to start gradually till it gets up and running and we need the support of this program Possibly at the expense of other programs. It is that important So we ask you to please find the funding to take care of these vulnerable seniors and yesterday that The county executive Submitted his state priorities and within his state priorities he did recognize this delegation of the responsibility back to the county is going to need some funding. So it was good to see that he asked for that in the state priorities. Very good to hear all the talk about housing. Housing was the topic of the Commission on Aging's public forum this year, and it intersects with the priorities of multiple commissions, including the people with commission on people with disabilities, veterans commission and others. It has been said that healthcare, housing is healthcare, housing is the solution to homelessness, housing affordability, accessibility and attainability is a pressing issue. While there have been positive developments at the state and county levels, especially this year, personally, I believe the county executive's public comments about attainable housing are counterproductive. We support attainable housing. We urge the county to focus though on specific programs. So we talked today about design for life. We could talk a lot more on that. We've talked to PHP about it with the commission on people with disabilities and we had a workforce that was recommended by the PHP committee. So we've talked to permitting and DHCA and we've had multiple meetings about design for life and the letter that Chair Gilchress sent on the recommendations, the Commission on Aging supports those recommendations and we were at the table to sort of come up with those recommendations as well. So there's a lot there to be said, but that everybody today is looking for money. And that program has $500,000 a year that's been almost wasted for 14 years. And we can't get that money back, but it needs to be utilized. And the success of Harp, having a million and a half from the ARPA funds and the success of Harp having a million and a half from the ARPA funds and the success of that and only a two year program It shows that the design for life could be utilized and even programs like the Laurie it Doesn't necessarily had to be that large scale But it should be also utilized by builders and developers the money is there to help them and it's $500,000 a year. So anyway, I also think that dysfunction to some degree at HOC, the largest landlord in the county or one of the largest landlords in the county, the process for the waiting list, the delegation of HOC vouchers, we have a commissioner that is a, works for the Revitalse in Rockville, low income housing for seniors, and she has vacancies and can't get HAC to fill those vacancies. So there is evidence of just things that need to be fixed and the waiting list situation could be improved. So we want to help both our homeowners and renters by working on these particular programs. Also, it was said by Chair Wilson, I believe, of the Veterans Commission that there's no, there's only one senior community or nursing home for veterans in Maryland. The Redgate property that was City of Rockville. Several years ago we supported that to become a veterans home. There's other properties perhaps that we could find and continue to be a leader in housing for our veterans and keep those 36,000 residents here in the county. So definitely support talking about that. So by investing in our budget priorities and advocacy issues we're working towards making Montgomery County a truly inclusive and age-friendly community we look forward to your continued collaboration to achieve this shared vision. Thank you. Thanks Mr. Chairman I'm going to have some follow-up for you but next we're going to be here for Miss D. C. McNeely with the Citizens Review Panel Advisory Group and start for the confusion earlier. But we're glad you're here. Thank you. First of all, I wanna start by thanking the council members for the opportunity to testify before you today and to share with you the priorities of our panel. I also wanna take the opportunity to thank my fellow panel members for their volunteer dedication to this effort. And also Lisa Merkin are staff liaison with the Child of Affair Services. She's been an invaluable part of us understanding, where we should best devote our time and and put our attention. So in this past fiscal year we had focused a lot on recruitment and retention of resource-home families. That's always an ongoing area of interest and concern as we need to make sure that we have significant accommodations for our children and youth that end up in the foster care system. But because we wanted to take a different focus, we chose new priorities for this year that we've just very recently started focusing on. So we're in the very early stages and hopefully when we get a chance to testify next year, we'll have some really great recommendations and feedback that we can share. The first of our priorities is one that in years past, it's been some time, we have focused on as a panel and we want to revisit again, which is support for youth that are aging out of foster care without legal permanency. Any sort of transition from youth into adulthood is always a challenge, but it's especially challenging for individuals who were in the foster care system and don't necessarily have the support systems and connections that other more privileged youth do have. So we've begun evaluating state and county policy connections that other more privileged youth do have. So we've begun evaluating state and county policy regarding the support and understand what the policies are in place today. And then we started familiarizing ourselves with various sources of research on the subject. Just to get an idea of what data is available, especially data that would indicate what sort of things might indicate or might lead to more successful outcomes for those transitioning youth. And then we're also considering ways in which the priorities of other boards and commissions might intersect. So this, you know, it's session these sessions today and tomorrow are very well timed for us because we're really interested in hearing the priorities of the other groups and seeing if there might be some intersection and overlap of ways in which we can align these priorities. So that's one of our priorities for this year. Additionally, we're also looking at how we can better develop a culture of support for the agency staff from the standpoint of retention. So, always another way that we want to make sure that our child welfare and child protective services are being applied appropriately, so making sure the agency is sufficiently staffed and making sure that the people that work within the agency feel supported. So we started reviewing literature on the child welfare staff retention publications. We've had discussions on how the needs of staff are definitely going to be different, whether it's somebody who is relatively new to the work of social services versus somebody who's more experienced. And then we've also begin brainstorming some concrete activities to support the staff for reduced stress. More short-term things that might provide continuing education or you know might just be a learning opportunity on something also that they may be able to apply to their work you know with the youth that are in foster care. So those are our two priorities additionally as as always the case we do regularly review the agency data on investigations and assessments out of home placements because we want to make sure that well regularly review the agency data on investigations and assessments, and out of home placements, because we want to make sure that, while we've chosen these particular priorities, that if there is anything that is being reported in the data that is shared that would indicate we might need to shift focus that we're aware of that as well. So that's part of our regular review. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. And last we will hear from Ms. Hannah Shah who has pinch hitting for Mr. Anthony Carter from our Board of Social Services. Good morning everyone. The Montgomery County Board of Social Services which provides a advisory oversight to social service programs with within Montgomery County that are funded by the Maryland Department of Human Services. Those programs include state funded income support programs, emergency stabilization programs, state mandated child protective services, foster care, state mandated adult protective services, and home care services. I'm delighted to be in front of you to discuss the priorities of the Board of Social Services has set for the 2024-2025 calendar year. As the Board of Social Services, it is our priority, our responsibility to ensure that the residents of Montgomery County have the greatest challenges and least resources receive the social services that they need. During the first half of 2023 last year's session, the Board of Social Services focused primarily on establishing and expanding our collaborative efforts with other boards, commissions, and committees, while also partnering with program area experts from child welfare services to identify additional areas where the board could best focus their efforts within the community and throughout HHS. Prior to the summer break, the board had two vacancies for which they were actively recruiting. During the break, they lost an additional two board members for a total of four vacancies. The board recently interviewed seven applicants for those vacancies and as sent recommendations for appointment to the County Executive's office. Once appointments are made, the board will be fully staffed. The board's main priorities for the new year include advocating for expanded access to multilingual resources, increasing advocacy for foster care initiatives, and collaborating with other boards, committees, and commissions. These priorities were shaped by meetings the board held last year with representatives from the Office of Eligibility and Support Services, Aging and Disability Services, and Child Welfare Services. The board believes that highlighting these priorities will allow them to raise awareness of fundamental needs, central to social services, enhanced resources available to residents, and expand service delivery. Excuse me. On behalf of the Board of Social Services, I would like to express how grateful they are for the ongoing work and support of the Montgomery County Council, which has made significant positive impacts on the lives of our most vulnerable residents. It is with your support that the social service programs available in our county have gone beyond meeting the basic needs of residents and expanding support and expand to supporting independence, self-sufficiency in order to create a better future for every resident. Thank you for your commitment to continue to serve the residents of Montgomery County, while making it a priority to provide the most vulnerable with the supports they need to be successful. The Montgomery County Board of Social Services greatly appreciates the partnership that they have with all members of the Sistemed Committee. Thank you all very much. I'll just jump in very quickly and then go to Councilmember Lutke, followed by Councilmember Sales. A couple of just news and notes to our esteemed commission on childcare. If you weren't aware, we're going to have a joint council session later this year with our economic development committee, where we will be discussing the importance of workforce development and how the impact of the lack of quality childcare is having on our economy. And so we definitely encourage you to tune in. And if there are questions that you would like for us to pose, please share those with Ms. Yao and we'll make sure they're included in the packet for that discussion. I'll focus for now on the commission on aging. Thank you so much, Mr. Engel. There's a lot there. I want to uplift something you said, which I think is really important and that's on the attainable housing component. Candidly, a lot of the testimony that we're receiving in opposition to the proposal is coming from our aging community, people who've been in their homes for a long time established, who are raising understandable concerns, sometimes based on frankly misinformation. And I appreciate you also uplifting the County Executive hasn't been as helpful here as put it kindly as I think he could and should be. There are legitimate concerns with the proposal and the recommendations that have been laid forth by the planning staff, but I do have a lot of faith having been around a long time in our legislative process and I do believe strongly we're gonna end up with something that's reasonable, but doing nothing I think most reasonable people can agree is not an option. So I would encourage the commission, there's no bill before us and I don't anticipate that there will be one before the end of this calendar year. But if and when there is one, please testify. Because I think the commission carries a lot of weight, we have a deep respect for Ural's work, so it would be good to hear that voice in any data or background that you can provide that would be helpful. I appreciate you raising the issue of the HOC. I've been a couple of concerns raised to our office about HOC recently about other matters, so I think we are going to have to follow up with our colleagues and planning and parks because there's there's something going on. I'm going to figure out what it is. And then lastly, on the nursing home issue, we recently had a joint meeting with members of the delegation and Senator Kramer, who as we all know is not a wallflower and I love them was passionately talked about the nursing home issue and his bill he will be reintroducing it and the council is reviewing the executive's recommendations and I'm very confident that the council will agree with that particular recommendation but it is going to have a budget impact but we know it's really important and has to move forward. So I'll come back in the queue, but I will now yearl to Councilmember Lutke, followed by Councilmember Sales. Thank you. Yes, thank you for flagging the issues you did, Mr. Engel, and I appreciate the level of attention to detail you and your colleagues on your commission always have. You know it's going to be a robust discussion and I appreciate that. I think to councilmember Avernos's point about the listening sessions we've been having on attainable housing. I think the phrase attainable was maybe the wrong word and I try to when I'm talking to folks express it as an expanding housing strategies because it's one tool in the bigger broader toolkit of increasing overall housing supply, right? And and so I'm trying to get folks to look at it through that lens as one thing it It's not dispositive, it does not solve all the things, but we have to take many steps, if you will, collectively in different directions, but all with a focused goal towards expanding housing supply in order to offset the supply demand crisis that we're having now, which impacts affordability. And for elevating the nursing home issue, this is a complex balance between the state and the county. And I appreciate that Senator Kramer will be doing that. I know there have been other laws that have been passed in the past few years, not with respect to the oversight piece, but with other adding expanding that set of laws that deal with how nursing homes are operated and that's important, but we need the compliance to happen. And how that comes to a resolution between the Maryland Department of Health and the county is a more complicated question. I have no doubt as noted Senator Kramer is not a wallflower and will continue to elevate that issue and I'm optimistic that there will be a positive resolution because we very much need one. With respect to the early child care and education piece. This is also another very layered, very nuanced area, which deals with both our workforce issues and availability issues. And I know we've all been working very closely on that, and some of those pieces are controlled by the state as well. So I look forward to the ongoing conversations in that arena for the Board of Social Services. And Hannah has heard me say this already because I am the Council's designate to the Board of Social Services, but especially given the turnover that you have raised is a part of the report to us today. And this isn't unique to the Board of Social Services. I think because, again, these are citizens who are volunteering their time to participate and to serve and may life happens and things may come up. And so you may have turnover on a Board committee or commission that's more frequent than expected or than the terms that had been assigned. That it would be a good policy or practice for us to recommend as the council that our boards, committees, and commissions keep a little, you know, whether it's PowerPoint presentations that somebody could look through and read, but sort of for whatever your board committee or commission is, your version of an onboarding packet that's there because the time that you all collectively come together to meet, every time you have a new member or a member's coming onboard, it becomes challenging because then you're having to rehash old things and you're not getting to your new business and quite the way you may have expected. So I think it would be good for boards to have that in their back pocket to help facilitate those types of transitions and and I'm happy to help with hours for the board of social Services, but in that respect, I think it would be good for the Board to have a general understanding and overview of the State Department of Human Services' responsibilities, and then also what county code has put in place for our Board of Social Services in terms of their work to help ground them and help them plan their agenda for strategic planning moving forward. With that, I yield. Thank you, Council Member Seals. All right. Thank you, Mr. Chair, and to all of our panelists. So glad to see that our Board's committees and commissions have been so active, especially our commission on aging. I recently celebrated the Senior Appreciation Day and thank you so much for joining us and sharing this comprehensive list of what you're up to and hope to be doing in the future. I know that our senior community continues to grow and people who choose to call Montgomery County home. I'm glad that they have an active commission. A lot of the priorities that you've mentioned do include funding requests as well. And with such a limited budget, I don't know if you've tallied up or calculated the entire funding ask for all of the priorities that have a funding request. If you can speak to that. We have a parallel document that has the numbers in it. We'd be happy to supply it. We went back and forth over if it's an FTE. Should we be the ones to determine how much that FTE costs the county? Or should we just the ones to determine how much that FTE costs the county? Or should we just put that in? But we have our costs, especially for the arc of Montgomery, the number of families that are losing respite care because their request was not met. So we have itemizations like that. As far as the nursing home oversight, Dr. Bridgers, has more knowledge of that funding request, but I'm gonna throw out a number which I will give myself the ability to walk back at some point. But I think it's a million and a half dollars that the program needs, whether it comes from the county or the state or which portion of it was coming from the county or state, but it's over a million dollars that, you know, that program that's a significant ask, but it's the most important, you know, of our priority affecting the most number of seniors, you know, that are vulnerable. But we'll supply those other numbers for you. Thank you, thank you. And I'm glad to see that the years some interest in the Senior Fellow Program someone was just asking me if that program is still ongoing so would love to talk with them. HR to see what the status of that is. And so I'll look out for your accompaniment and look forward to ongoing conversations about the priorities you've shared. Ms. McNeely, thank you for your updates on our foster care and, well well the needs and foster care. I believe when you the panel was here last year, I asked questions about the compensation model for our foster parents. I don't know if you have that information or if you can send that information in. Yeah, I don't have it with me. I do have our usual agency data report that we review every month, but it does not include that specific data, but we can certainly send that information along. Yes, because it would be helpful to know how we're determining the compensation for our foster parents and how often that's being evaluated and updated. And the current need for foster parents, do we know how many foster parents we currently have in Montgomery County? We do. So right now, as of the date of we received from September 24, we have 116 licensed foster homes that doesn't include restricted relative homes. There were two newly assigned regular home studies. So there's two home studies going on that will hopefully result in additional foster homes. Um, and a number of recruitment inquiries. 34. Okay. Okay. And how many kids aren't on a wait list or what does a wait list look like for kids that we know need to be placed in foster care. What happens during that time? Are they still in their abuser's home? Is there a transition center? What what happens as kids are waiting to be placed. I'm not aware of a wait list. As far as the panel is aware, there's been sufficient placement either in out of home care or with a relative or someone else, you know, that is suited for that. I don't believe that there is a wheeler at this time, but I will double check and confirm with you. And if there is, I'll get the numbers to you. Thank you. And then you mentioned that you all look at investigations and assessments and evaluate out of home placements. How many investigations are currently underway? So as of the data that we received for 24, there were 82 new alternative response cases and 64 new investigative response cases and then 86 non-CPS cases. Okay and how many have been closed out in the past year? I don't have the data for the full year because the data that we're reviewing is for the fiscal year, so it's in the last three months. But we have fiscal year 24. Yeah. So we have 126 that were completed, where there were findings indicated 79 completed investigations where they were of findings indicated 79 completed investigations where they were unsubstantiated and 100 and 2 where they were ruled out. Wow. Okay. You all have your hands full. And we continue to talk about the lack of social services service social workers in the field and just the increased mental health challenges for our young people. They added stress with our parents. So I can imagine how overwhelming this can be. So looking forward to hearing what recommendations we are able to support and I will finish with our last panelist about the Board of Social Services. Are there any foster care initiatives that you're hoping to increase advocacy towards? So the Board has identified foster care initiatives in general. I think they plan to speak with child welfare again to see now that the new board session has started, which particular initiatives they can help support. Good. And with new perspectives, that should be more robust priority list. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, colleagues. Great questions and points. I just had a couple of follow-ups. So to Ms. McNeely on the aging out issue, we're dealing with a constituent issue right now and shout out to Ms. Markin, who is a fantastic partner. We refer lots of constituent cases to her, and I'm fortunate to have a clinical license social worker as my chief of staff. And so she's familiar with how to navigate what we know can be a very complex and emotional system. So I wanna come back to that. It's been an eye opening issue. We hear it a lot in the disability community for children that age out. And I think there needs to be more of a focus on They're not being enough support services because just turning 18 does not mean you're an adult And we know the trauma that these These young people are dealing with and we need to continue to be able to provide those supports So I look forward to following up with colleagues in HHS to see what more we can do as a matter of policy to continue that support. And then I think that's it for now. Thank you all so much. We appreciate your leadership and commitment and we will be reconvening tomorrow bright and early again. And once again, just a disclaimer, after this session, we're going to review whether it makes sense to continue to start at the time we've been starting. It had been our practice. We talked about this at the very beginning, Council Member Sales, to allow for time for these incredible volunteers to get back to work or with on with their lives, but but we've heard from a couple that earlier is actually more challenging. So we'll see where we go. There may not be a complete consensus, but we'll track it. With that, thank you all very much. We are adjourned and we'll convene again tomorrow morning.