I'm going to have to call the Social Services Committee to order for September 23rd with clerk want to take the role. Supervisor Tam, the supervisor, my Lee. Present. I'm going to give instructions. For in-person participation, the meeting site is open to the public. If you'd like to speak on an item, you can fill out a speaker's card in the front of the room and pass it to the clerk for remote participation. Follow the teleconferencing guidelines posted at www.acgov.org. If you'd like to speak on an item remotely, use the raise your hand function. Thank you. All right, so good afternoon. So our first item is an informational item on supporting father involvement and success. Okay, presenters, Kevin Berman and Arnold Chandler. First, I just want to thank you for your time. I know you guys have a lot going on, so I appreciate you making time for the Father's Corps on your agenda today. To get us started, I just wanted to remind attendees of where this work started back in 2013. The Father's Corps is housed at first five Alameda County and supported by the Infrastructure of First Five in Alameda County. It's funded by first five and all four of our major systems. Alameda County Health, probation, social services and health care. I'm excuse me, child support. We just celebrated our 10 year anniversary back in August of 2023, which is amazing. When Gary Thompson, my friend and colleague who was no longer with us has passed away When we started this work we could have never we could have only imagined That would it would have grown to this point To acknowledge our 10-year anniversary and kind of the document and illustrate the impact of the work We conducted a 10-year evaluation with our consultant Arnold Chandler from Forward Changed Consulting who's here today to share those findings from that evaluation. And with that, I'm gonna turn it over to Arnold. Good afternoon, I'm delighted to be here and present to you today on this remarkable program. Let me see if this clickers live. There it is. Okay. Sorry, my slides are a little crowded today. I took out the animation. So I'll tell you what I'm talking about, kind of where it is on the slide. I wanted before I jumped into this to give you a bit of a background on this evaluation project. It was to understand the impact that Fathers Corps had on Fathers who participated in the program, but also the service providers that served them and the systems leaders who oversee the systems that impact Fathers. But part of that, part of the project also involved substantial scan and synthesis of the research literature, understanding models out there, how they compare to Fathers Corps, what impacts they have. Part of the project also involved substantial scan and synthesis of the research literature. Understanding models out there, how they compare to father's core, what impacts they have. And one editorial I can say at the top of this is that there's no model like this serving fathers. Most of fatherhood programs are just service programs, usually a single or maybe multiple providers delivering support groups, referring out to different types of services. But there are no examples aside from Father's Corps where there are systems change objectives, where there's direct capacity building to service providers embedded within systems. So that's unique. And that unique, in fact, is earned. This Board of Supervisors recognition in the scan that I identified, there was one article that lifted up as a national example, the Board's adoption of father-friendly principles for county agencies as something that other counties should adopt. I can't tell you to the extent that other counties have followed suit, but this work has actually shown up in the research literature as having national significance. So I wanted to highlight that before I dig into the details. The objective of Father's Corps to put a fine point on it is to create a father-friendly system of care for families across not only programs that directly serve fathers because fathers are in their names, like Father's Corps, but all the other systems they're likely to encounter. Healthcare systems, public agency, social support, child welfare, I mean child support. All these agencies encounter fathers in various ways and understanding how they can be more father friendly to create an integrated system of care was the primary, I think, motivation of this effort. And the components really speak to what it's required to achieve that end result. Now this was the 10-year evaluation, so this was an anniversary and I was asked to conduct an impact evaluation with the evidence that I could gather and what the existing evidence that the team at Father's Court gathered over time. I had three questions driving this. The first is, what effect, number one, up there? What effect has Father's Court had on fathers and father figures? The second one was, how has Father's Court influenced service providers who work directly with fathers, providing services to those fathers and how they can change their practices? And the last one is very unique. And that's what impact has Father's score had on service delivery to fathers by public private and nonprofit organizations. One of the features that make this model stand out nationally. I collected a variety of data in the form of surveys, key informant interviews, a focus group, et cetera. This was all conducted between the start of 2023 and the start of 2024. The model has four-may components. The system-building piece is the piece that's focused on trying to get systems leaders to change practices within institutions to better support fathers. Capacity-building is focused on service providers, improving their ability to serve fathers effectively and improve their outcomes. And then, father engagement in support is the direct service provision of fathers. This often showed up as support groups for groups of fathers or training workshops. Undergirding all three of these strategies is efforts to reshape the narrative, to change essentially how institutional actors understand low-income fathers of color. The narratives they have, the assumptions they make, the understandings they have, not only because it allows them to serve fathers better, but it's also because these institutions have important roles to play in defining what fatherhood means for these young fathers. When you go to a healthcare facility as a young man, say you're 20 years old and you have a child. How those folks in that facility treat you shapes your perception of yourself as a father. Your budding fatherhood identity is influenced by these early experiences. When you pick them up from school, how teachers and administrators interact with you, shapes your identity as a father. So it's not just that we're trying to make these folks more effective, we're trying to make awareness as well of their role. We, in the spirit of we loving the father's core work, I say that, but I'm not doing the work on the grind day to day. Now there were three target populations and three outcomes that were the focus of this effort. For fathers, it was to improve the quality of father child interactions and relationships for low income fathers of color not residing with their children, particularly fathers who have children ages 0 to 5, but many fathers with children older than that were served by this program. Service providers, the goal is to improve the understanding and effectiveness with which they serve these fathers and that's, and this is two service providers, through providing them primarily training workshops and other forms of capacity building. And then systems leaders, the goal there, explicitly was to change policy and practice, to see its show up, to see institutional leaders reporting that it showed up in their organizations, both public agencies, private organizations, like healthcare facilities and nonprofit organizations. So what we learned through interviews, most of what we learned about systems change efforts were through interviews with high level systems leaders and public agencies, but they, several of them also completed surveys that allowed us to give generalized analysis on what the impacts were. We also interviewed a large number of service providers who provided us data and a large number of fathers. The impacts that we saw for fathers, who primarily participated in support group sessions, where that 89% reported improved interactions with their children as a result of the support groups. 81% reported being able to apply new parenting practices. 78% reported a boost in confidence in their fathering and 67% reported expanding their networks of social support. So pretty substantial effects for fathers. For service providers who primarily participated in training workshops, they reported that 73% made fatherhood issues part of their strategic planning efforts. 69% sought to obtain funding to support providing programs or services to fathers. 56% sought greater participation of fathers in their programs. 48% added requirements to serve fathers to RFPs and contracts. 46% modified existing programs to better serve fathers. 46% used new approaches to recruit and retain fathers. And 44% added new services specifically for fathers. And to give you a sense of the perspective on who these service providers are, they pretty much reflect the entire service infrastructure of Alameda County. They're across all our public agencies, they're across schools, they're across health agencies, they're across child support agencies, and they're up and down the hierarchy. Some are more middle level and some are higher level respondents to this survey. For folks who were at the system levels, training workshops and other support activities were critical for their shifts. CC5% reported that participating in Father's Corps helped make staff more effective in communicating with and engaging with fathers. 60% led them reported that participation led them to make fathered issues part of their organization strategic plans. 55% had greater participation of fathers in their programs. 40% changed, sought or obtained funding to provide services to fathers and 40% reported that they are planning to offer new services. In addition to identifying impacts, my requirements for the evaluation were to help provide recommendations for what could be improved going forward. For fathers, I drew a lot of lessons from fathers about one father exclaimed in the focus group that every father, every young father in Allermy and the county should know about this program. And they don't. Most don't. In fact, most of them described the fact that word of mouth is the primary way. They found out about it. And the primary way they connect other folks. They described it as, we should have every bus bench in Allermy and the county with an ad about Father's Court on that. We know that the federal government funds, things like ad campaigns focused on fathers. They ask questions about provocative questions to fathers, like what have you done as a father today and things like that? Part of the Fatherhood Initiative at fatherhood.gov that was created more than a decade and a half ago. But the problem with those ads, the great is that they don't point to Father's Court. They don't lead folks to what's homegrown in an animated county. And so folks emphasize the need for greater visibility. I joke that I don't know if you've all seen something wrong, call Anne Fong ads that seem to be everywhere. The present, we need to take a page from her playbook and figure out how we turn fatherhood, especially the identity of fatherhood and is something that we hold sacred and we provide resources and support for. Fathers also mentioned the need for more one-on-one sessions of individualized support. There are other support groups they participate in, but they want direct interaction, more of direct individualized consulting and advising. Provide fathers more referrals to services, access to services is one of the biggest demands that fathers had and being a conduit to the various services across the county is an important role that fathers could play. And also help fathers establish legal parenting time agreements to get access to their children. Most of the evidence in the national evaluations of fatherhood programs and most of the best practice literature points to the fact that if there's not something that sustains parental access Most of the evidence in the national evaluations of fatherhood programs and most of the best practice literature points to the fact that if there's not something that sustains parental access to the child, fathers will not invest in their development as fathers. They will not acquire the skills, they will not do all the other programming, being able to turn that into direct interactions with their father as crucial and so parenting time agreements are a critical aspect of that. For service providers, creating a series of workshops that build on each other over time was highlighted as a desired need. Creating a comprehensive directory of all fatherhood services in Alameda County. Currently, there isn't such a directory. And it's mostly in the heads and in the awareness of practitioners leading support groups of providing direct services to this population. The last one there is reintroduce a male specific learning community. At the beginning of Father's Corps the learning community was focused on males participating male service providers participating with fathers over time that group has come to encompass both males and females and a number of folks were desiring to have another subgroup that is male, specific and male focused as well. In terms of systems, facilitating teen training and internal team development within public agencies, supporting those teams as they go through the ongoing years-long process of trying to institutionalize father-friendly principles, was highlighted as a critical need. And the father-score team is a mighty team of two, three. And so they're doing a lot of work. So it's challenging to be able to take on this role as well. But many of the folks who are senior leaders in public agency said, if I had this support, I could tell you all the ways that I can institutionalize within my agency. But my internal staff are not going to run with this I can tell you all the ways that I can institutionalize within my agency. But my internal staff are not going to run with this on their own. They need guidance, they need support. And so that was the top most recommendation from systems leaders. Offering training and coaching the service champions who aren't going to have top level endorsement from senior leaders who want to figure out how to do internal organizing to institutionalize these practices. Establish a partnership with child support services to pilot a program that reduces child support arrears in exchange for completing key milestones in father school programs. This was piloted in New York State to great effect and increase the employment levels of fathers, owing especially things like ten-f-aR-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R and maintain regular employment. And the last thing is to collaborate with community colleges and educational institutions to essentially create more coherent, credentialing guidelines for supporting fathers that don't currently exist in many of the programs for those who are in these family service providers and so forth for service provision centers. And that's my deck. And let me know if you have any questions on that, to answer those before I That's a presentation Is that all of the presentation Okay, so I'll see if supervisor Ham as any questions or comments and and I, make some comments and questions. Thank you for that presentation. Is this you in the picture? I think President Miley was asking because we have three decks here and they all seem somewhat related. I appreciate the presentation and the description of what's transpired in the last 10 years, at least since 2013. When you had the statistics on the respondents on what their views are of the programs, what they took away, is it a consistent group like did you start with a number of people in 20, that 2013 and did they stay with the program till the end or was it during periods of time that this survey was taken over? The survey was retrospective so it asked people to tell us, what do you think the changes are before you started this program versus now? There was no baseline data collected that we could use to collect data now compared to. How many people were surveyed? The total survey population was I think a thousand something and the total number of respondents was 200 something across all subgroups. So were these thousand surveyed individuals part of the program at some point? I can't be certain about that. Yes. Yes. Yes. They were part of the they had been touched by the program in some way. Either they attended the learning community. They attended our fathers groups or were touched in some other way by the Fatherathers Corps work. They were part of the work. Okay. So the individuals, how long were they in the program on average? So there are three different groups. There's the fathers and father figures, service providers, and the systems leaders. With the father figures, fathers and father figures, I believe our median involvement was something like 12, around 12 months, 12 or 13 months if I'm not mistaken. It's in the report, I can point you to that. I don't have the report in front of me, but I can pull it up and tell you what page after this. But it was, roughly was roughly a year. Roughly a year is the doses, but there were a number of people who stayed it in it for the past decade. Go every year and participate in the sport groups of the trainings on an ongoing basis. Yeah, we've got folks who have been there like Arnold said from day one, who are still here with us. I think we might have one or two in the room now. And then we have new folks that come every month. Our training series goes from September through May and then we restart every September. Do you have a similar number during each session session? I'd say on average, we probably average about 15 to 20 per session and that's providers. That's providers. Our fathers group which is dad discussions which is a virtual fathers group that we launched back in 2020. That average attendance is probably six to 12. That's a wide range but you know how it is for free events. And when you I know that wasn't one of the survey questions, but how do they typically get involved? You said, through word of mouth, but you were talking about as, working through the community. College system, working with child support. So what's the, where do you get the most attendees from? I'd probably say our fatherhood partnership. So we have seven partners that we provide funding to to offer a father-specific parenting education and support groups. Those groups pretty much go on gear around and that's where we touch the most dads directly. We have our summit also which we host every two years where we get about 500 participants about half of those are dads, half of those are not and then our dad discussions is our other direct service to dad. So dad discussions in the summit and then we also fund seven organizations to offer a father centered and father specific services. And then we have other partners who are providing direct service to dads to who are also a part of the father's core network. Okay, so when you said you fund a father's core funds, but you get your funding from first five and then first five. First five. You allocate. Very clear. First five. First five. Did you allocate to the first five? Very clear. First five is the agency where Father's Corps is housed. So when I say, Funded, it's definitely not Father's Corps. It's first five. And then also our systems partner as well. Partners. That's it. I understand that. The reason I'm trying to understand the attendance and participation is usually a lot of the programs are in, like for example, some of our social service programs and shelters, it depends on how many people come in through the program, then they build the social services department. So I wasn't sure whether that was based on participation rates in terms of the funding sources that you have. I think also we get a lot of participants, meaning we touch dads through our learning communities for providers. So our trainings that we offer are attended by providers who work with families. Now those providers now have a place where they can send their dads for support where prior to the Father's Court there weren't a lot of father-centered or father-specific programs out there. So we have this network of providers that we provide training to every year and those providers are the ones on the ground in the community working with families and then they refer dads to our services. Okay, thank you. I really appreciate the evaluation in hearing how this is a model that could and should be emulated. And, you know, I knew Gary, I got over to the Board of Supervisors going back on my days at the City Council and just to think how this is kind of just a seed was planted and it's grown and it's still growing. So what I'd like to know is with the recommendations, is there is there a ask from the committee for the Board of Supervisors so that we can help continue to nurture a father's core. We are in the third year of a five-year contract with Alameda County Health who holds the contract that collects the money from our systems partners and distributes it to us to do this work. We're going to be on the fourth year really soon and it's going to be time to start thinking about what we're going to do moving forward very soon. Support with growing the budget would be ideal. There's a lot that we can do. We get requests. I get requests literally weekly for services. So whatever we can do to grow, whatever you can do to support the growth and development so that we can serve more would be what the ask is really. So when would you, so you're in the third year or five years, so maybe next year would be a good year to try to see how we can work towards putting something forth in the fifth year. That would then go for maybe another five years. So do and you know I'm trying to think do I need to talk to the health care services agency director? Do I need to pull in? Because she's a direct report to the Board of Supervisors, the social services director, the probation chief, and the director of child support. They're all direct reports of the supervisors. Do I need to pull all four of them together with you guys and maybe myself so we can figure this out That would be amazing. That would be amazing. Yes, right. Okay, you guys hear that right? And you know, so I was just wondering if that would be helpful. That would be very helpful. Okay Okay, because I know I mean, I'm a you know me. I. I've been to some of your summits. I don't know if I've been to every summit, but I've been to a number of the summits. And I really feel strongly about this. And I just think for a long time, fathers were part of the equation. And I think that's something Gary recognized. You've recognized, and I think that's why we have this. And we've seen some good outcomes and we need to continue to grow that and obviously we recognize the importance of mothers and I came from a two-parent also both my mom and my dad were important to me you know my mom called the shots but my you know my dad was the enforcer and my parents didn't play I mean they were also they did not play and you know I wouldn't be here today in the sitting and see what wasn't for my you know my parents didn't play. I mean, they were old school. They did not play. Yeah. And I wouldn't be here today in the sitting and see what for my parents. My father definitely provided a lot of nurturing and guidance for me in terms of working at other things. So I really think that's extremely important of the work that's done through the father core. And the fact that you're targeting low-income fathers who are not part of the household, I think, is even more significant. And I was just thinking, because I don't think I've asked you this question, do we have a universe of how many fathers were talking about out there in Alameda County that are low income, not residing with the child and the child's under five or five or under. Do we have a universe, do we have a sense of how many fathers were talking about? Not for Alameda County. I think there are some rough national estimates. Sorry. Not for Alameda County, unfortunately. We have some rough national estimates in the existing literature, but not for this geography. So I'd really like for us to maybe try to kind of see if we can come up with at least earlier when you're talking to Supervisor Tam, I mean, going forth like a baseline. Because I think that would be important. Because I'd like to get that some of that data in terms of how we were talking, you know, the ages, ethnicity, all that kind of stuff. And if you don't have that, I think that would just help us with our, with the program. But I'll, I'll make it a commitment. And you know, I really don't want to take on more work, but I'll make a commitment because I really feel strongly about this. So follow up with my office so that sometime next year, I can get together with you folks. Child support, social services, probation chief, health care services agency. So we can talk this through. We can pull in Christine as well. She's not a direct this through, we can pull in Christine as well. She's not a direct report, but we can pull her in as well. And then keep in mind, measure C, you're? Yes. Yeah, because measure C was passed for early childhood development. And I hope that you're going to be seeking some support through the measure C source of funding. Yes, we definitely have an early childhood lens from which we can put some father programming together for sure. What we did notice in our evaluation is and also not only in our evaluation, but evaluation confirmed it is most of the dads that we serve are dads who have older children and so measure C is for zero to five. So in order to be able to continue to serve the majority of fathers in which we serve, we will need external money. We can't pull down measure C or OCI for that and Arnold can give an explanation of Other programs having the same issue as far as struggling with Identifying working with younger dads of younger children That's a national Yeah, it's everywhere The father's tend to be in their mid 30s The fathers tend to be in their mid-30s. Their kids tend to be in 10 or 11. I don't want to call it a joke, but the comment that I've heard is that most of these fathers who participate in these programs are on their second round of children. They're trying to get it right this time. They made mistakes the first time and they're trying to correct those mistakes. So you see that a lot play out. So they will be in their 30s and have young children. They also have teenagers. They also have folks. And what I love about this model, which is unique, when we looked at the range of fathers, there are fathers in their 70s, 60s, 50s and 40s who go to these things regularly. So you have a few fathers that are in their 20s, things surrounded by fathers and grandfathers, and maybe in some great grandfathers, and they have a community of support, a community of thinking about their fatherhood journey in that light with these fathers. And I think that is a necessary and beautiful aspect of this model. Most of the other models try and narrow to a specific demographic of fathers. Fathers who are ages 30 to 38 or 25 to 38, we're going to keep it to this group. And whatever types of children profile they have, that's what we're going to serve. I feel like because the community aspect of old fathers, old heads is so important to young men, their model is able to leverage that in other ways that other national models have not been able to. So I think it's very important to keep that full age spectrum while you try and fill out as much as possible the lower end of zero to five and younger fathers. Okay. As a father, as you're dealing with aren't just, you're dealing with all fathers. That's what I thought, okay. But the evaluation was just done with fathers who have kids under five. And no, we analyze subgroup separately. So we report what we learned for fathers with kids under five. It's not in this, this is much truncated version of the report, which is longer. And we have the data. Yeah. But I got confused then because it's a targeted population. And it just said low income fathers of color not residing. So yeah, it's an emphasized but not exclusive population. I see. I hate to make sure that population is served for the high success. I see. OK. OK, that was a little confusing for me. Okay. Because I thought I thought you did with all fathers. Okay. Good. Because I think once I just think that's extremely important because we need fathers to both be role models and also provide discipline, structure, et cetera. We definitely need all of that. All right. So I'm going to rely on when you guys contact my office at some point in 2025. So we can get on top of July 1st, is that what I heard? July 1st? Maybe before July 1st. Yeah, and I know Andrew Ford won't let me forget. Yeah, because she's good like that. So we'll make this, have that conversation going forward. So we can be looking at this when we begin to look at fiscal year 2526. But you're funding ends 2627, right? Yes. Okay. Yeah. So we want to try to get ahead of it at least, begin doing some thinking about it. All right. Great. Thank you So let's see if there any public speakers on this Elisa and yeah, can I also I also want to give you our annual fatherhood calendar and Thank you for your time Good afternoon. My name is Elisa, coordinator of student and parent support programs at Hayward Unified School District. Our partnership with the Fathers Corps has been extremely beneficial to our fatherhood work in H. R.A.C. It's through this partnership that we've been able to receive valuable training on fatherhood friendly practices, principles, and resources that we've been able to receive valuable training on fatherhood friendly practices, principles, and resources that we've been able to share with fathers in Hayward Unified. The work we've been able to do to accomplish over the last eight years has allowed us to launch our Café Dad program and provide hundreds of fathers and father figures with valuable group discussions on topics such as parental resilience, navigating co-parenting, and the opportunity to attend the annual Fatherhead Summit. Our frequent cafe data attendees have gone on to become parent ambassadors, which is more of a leadership program in our school district, and support with various leadership roles at their schools in which their children attend. And I believe this has been because of the skills and the education and the conversations that they've been able to be a part of in the CAFE DEB program that we've seen them go on to other supportive roles in supporting their child's educational journey in our school district. The work of the Father Court has allowed us to shift our practices as a school district in terms of how we support fathers and father figures. When we go and talk about this work at national conferences across the country, we are always asked about our work with fathers and how many other school districts are just starting their journey in this work. The innovation and creativity of the Father Corps has given us a unique opportunity to serve fathers in many ways and we hear that appreciation often from the fathers that have participated. I'd like to thank the Father's Corps for their partnership with HSD and for their continued support and expanding fatherhood friendly principles across our district and our community. Thank you. Lisa Taylor. friendly principles across our district and our community. Thank you. Lisa Taylor. Good afternoon. Lisa Taylor from the City of Oakland Head Start program. I'm the family and community engagement coordinator. Last year with the father core we partnered and did some wonderful there a wonderful group that did some support for our families. Fathers really appreciated the time they took with the children the I'm sorry I should have had a speech like or the time they took to take them on trips, we did, I had a partnership that we had several, the bowling, a dad's groups with their children, and a lot of dads appreciate it. And I've noticed a lot more engagement with dads, and I'm hoping this year, so we have about 400 or something kids, and we had about over 150 dads come out to these events, also come to the father's summit events. So I'm just hoping for a lot more of this school year. We had five events last year and I hope to get a lot more data from this, but I also I noticed they said for boys of color, the scores went up from the engagement of dads. And I should have had the data with me from our DRDP scores. We noticed there was a report that I have. I'll bring next time or share with the City of Oakland. I'm sorry to be so nervous looking at the time too. And I just want to get shot out to dad today. It's his birthday. My dad was very important to me. So that's off to dad. So he would have been 86. Okay, I'm sorry. Back to the so, Father Corps, very important. Please continue to give them funding for this good cause. Cause my dad was there for me for almost sport activities in school and it was very important for me to go to college because my dad and the things from my dad and mom. Okay. By the core. Azita? Okay. Anthony? Good afternoon. My name is Anthony Propernic. I'm with the city of Oakland Public Library, 8470 branch, and I have the East Oakland engagement team. We do Father Circle, Bike Repair, Community Outreach Engagement. We've been a part of the Father's Corps partnership for six years. We average about 18 groups a year. It's a dinner. Wednesday night dinner, twice a month. We have about eight to 12 fathers. I wanted to say first something about the impact on the fathers in the room and the group is that it's been one of the most in my 20 years with the library. It's been one of the most meaningful and all in my whole career and social services been most meaningful experience I've ever had being able to be with fathers having the knowledge share and support each other through the both the triumphs and challenges of parenting. One thing I want to say about the Father Corps and what they've done specifically is they hold space and you might hear numbers about what they've done but what they've, the capacity they've built in our organization and other organizations like mine like Hayward O.S.D., Hayward University School District is they've created this, it was not just not going to show up in the numbers, they've created this community of people who are engaging with fathers and spaces for fathers to participate. I think they also hold space between different agencies like Child Support Services and different partnerships that I have connected with, like, Dad's evoking change, eSpaed Agency for Children, where we've leveraged our offerings to complement each other and leverage our work and working with fathers. We now have four fathers from our group that I've helped facilitate on the co-facilitate because we have fathers from our group who are now facilitating our group the library. They've grown into those positions and they will continue to grow and will continue to grow. My time is up but I appreciate you continuing the committee. I have a number of speakers for item one. Thank you. I think for the score. Do you present annually to the board? Do the committee? Okay. Great. Let's do that. I have a number of speakers for item one. Great. Thank you. I think Father's Court, do you present annually to the board? Do the committee? Okay, great, let's do that. Yeah, yeah, okay. Supervisor, this was supposed to be a joint health care social service agency presentation. We'll be couldn't find a date for the joint presentation. Okay, all right. Okay, great, all right. So thank you. I appreciate the testimony from folks in reference to the virtue of the Father's Corps. All right, let's go to our next item. It's an informational item. It's all support services update. Thank you. Good afternoon, President Miley and Supervisor Tam, Billis Nance, your Director of Child Support Services. Thank you for the opportunity to provide an update on child support. I'm going to present an overview and Vangerie Harvey, who is our supervising attorney, will present the legislative changes and the impacts that those changes have, will have on our program. So I always start off with our vision because our vision is that all parents are fully engaged in supporting the well-being of their children with the well-being of their children being front and center. We do this. We are moving towards this vision by encouraging responsible parenting, family self-sufficiency by the traditional methods of locating, establishing and enforcing child support obligations. As of August, this past August, we have collected over $72 million for the families in Alameda County. That's on target for the collections that we collected last year. So we are collecting a lot of money to help families become self-sufficient. We have about 25,000, well, 26,000 children that we serve, that are part of our program and so they have the benefit of our services, which is really centering their wellbeing in all the services that we do. I wanted to kind of provide a breakdown of what our parents look like in our case load. Our custodial parents can be fathers or mothers, so we're not talking about being gender-specific. But I do have that breakdown that we have about 6% of the custodial parents are fathers with 94% of the custodial parents, meaning they have the child, they are mothers. When you look at the ethnicity, we see that we have a large percentage that's other and that other is either they did not identify or they have another background that's not absolutely represented here. 28% African American, 20% Hispanic, with 9.8% white and 5.9% Asian Pacific Islander. When we look at, you know, the status, their economic status, we have our largest percentage of custodial parents are formally assisted, which means that at some point they were on CalWORKS. They were receiving public assistance. We have 20% that are now currently receiving CalWORKS, and then we have another 20% that has never received any public assistance, or at least not cash public assistance. Our average age is 42, with the highest age range being 30 to 39. So we have fairly young parents in our caseload with the majority of our parents being located, custodial parents being located in Oakland. When we look at the non-custodial parent and in that, we have 91% that are male and 8% that are female. Again, highest percentage of the non-custodial parents are African-American. And you can see the rest of the breakdown Hispanics, Nex, that other category, and white at 10.4% and Asian Pacific Islanders at 8.3%. And then we looked at the employment status of the parents that we are serving who are non-custodial parents. And 55% of them have an active employment with another large percentage, over 40% that don't have any employment information in our system. So don't necessarily know that they are unemployed, at least they are not, there's no W2 wage earnings being reported out. Again, our average, we, of the average age is 43%, but we still have the largest age range from 30 to 39 at 33% with the largest of our non-custodial parents residing in Oakland. For last year's federal performance measures, we obtained 98% in paternity establishment. We had a 91% order establishment. Current support, we were at 63% and a Rears Collections, we were at 66%. When we look at our current support collections number, we understand when you look at that employment information, we understand why that number isn't higher. And we are really working on trying to find the resources and partnerships that would allow for our non-custodial parents to obtain appointments so that they would be able to effectively support their children. Talk a little bit about our community partners with the FatherCore being a real community partner working with them not only to do the internal work of creating a father-friendly environment inside our office but also doing the work to advance the conversations about child support. As many know, child support for years has been one of those agencies when you say our name, people start to run. And so we have really worked really hard to build our reputation. And Father's Corps has been an anchor in that work, able to share with many of the fathers that they work with, that we have a debt reduction programs and any new programs that we have. We are partnering with Father Corps to really start to really create that father-friendly environment in the sense of looking at our policies and our procedures and having a core group to say, a father's from Father Corps to say, okay, does that really work? Is that in the best interest of the family? So we're excited about starting that kind of work. We have been working with probation, doing the same level of work with probation as they are building the reputation for child support, our debt reproduction program, we're at their core center providing information and really sharing that information. We have some work with workforce and we are really starting to look at that because of our unemployment process. We have an MOU where we can start doing some referrals to workforce, just trying to identify and prioritize the parents that would benefit the most from this work. We're doing all of this work. We work with social services, the libraries, not only just to build the reputation of the Child Support Program, but to really center our program around resources and serving the whole family. You know, as you were talking about some of the data, when I look at some of the data, I probably can pull data from our system and say, here are the parents, the fathers who have children from zero to five. That's not the entire universe, but that would be a portion of that universe so we can get that information. But we serve probably more fathers in this program than most of your other social services program. Probably the prison system is the only system that you're going to see a large percentage of service to men. So we are trying to build internally, as well as externally, our capacity to serve both the parents in this work. And as I said before, with centering the well-being of children at the forefront of the work that we do, what we know for sure is that in the next couple of years, there are some major legislative changes that will, I'm not gonna say complicate our work, but will require, will require us to have a lot more partnerships and gather a lot more information so that we can provide and get the best information. Benjiri Harvie is our supervising attorney, has been working with the state on many of the legislative proposals that are coming up and she is going to talk a little bit about what's coming, what impact does that have for the families that we are serving? So I'm going to turn it over to Venturia. Good afternoon, President Meiley, Supervisor Tam. Thank you for the opportunity to share about some of the legislative updates that have been impacting the child support program. There has been quite a bit of changes in the child support program from a legislative standpoint. I'm gonna highlight a couple for you this afternoon. First is AB 207, which was passed last year, I mean not last year, in 2022, which is formally assisted pass-through. This was passed really with a focus on getting resources, getting money into the homes of the children. So this applies to parents who were previously active to aid or TANF or CalWORKS Works as we call it here in California. And the any collections that happens on those arrears, those funds now go straight to the family. They no longer are taken to recoup our county fisc to pay us back for the welfare that was paid out. And so we can see a direct impact of this legislative change on the families in the state of California and clearly here in Alameda County. The current numbers are at about $1.4 million that would have gone toward the county fisc are now being passed through to families. When you take into account that we would intercept, you know, IRS and FTP refunds, those funds now we would use those to recoup the arrears. Those funds are now going directly to the families, as well as any other collections that are made on those cases. The goal is really about self-sufficiency. I'm really trying to make sure that families have what they need for their families and for their children to thrive. We are currently in the phase of implementing the flexibility, efficiency, and modernization in child support enforcement program. Our acronym for it is the FEM final rule. In 2016, the Office of Child Support Services through the Administration of Family and Services through the Administration of Family and Services through the Federal Government published this film on a rule on December 20th of 2016. They had a number of goals that they were focused on as they looked at child support from a national landscape. They recognized that many states had a quite a bit of a large balance of our rears that were due. They knew that many states were reporting that collections were not coming in in the way that was consistent and regular. And so they had goals in publishing this final rule, which was increasing consistent and on time payments. They wanted to reduce the accumulated debt that had accumulated from child support areas. They wanted to make sure that we were using our technology in the best way possible, and that we were using evidence-based results for establishing our support orders, and that we were really trying to achieve and attain good customer service. So California had been working with this for many years and their California legislature actually passed Senate Bill 343 on September 22nd of 2023. It allowed for a year for us to be able to implement. And so our first set of changes was effective September 1st of 2004. Our first change was really to the guideline calculator. How much are we actually calculating for the child support? And when they looked at the formula, they determined that we needed to modernize the income bands, the income ranges. There was a point in time under the prior guideline that it did not matter whether you were earning $666 a month up to $5,000. You are all treated the same, the percentage of your income of the net disposable income that was used toward support was the same. Now they have actually created, added a new income band and basically broke down the lower income bands into three categories so that the percentage rises as you earn more money so that the percentage is actually lower when you're at a lower income basis. And so this is allowing for the child support orders to be more aligned with a person's income than having a skew by having a large income range being considered at the same percentage rate of the net disposable income that could be applied toward support. The other thing that this bill did was that it basically said that if you are earning full-time minimum wage in the state of California, you will be entitled to a low income adjustment. That was not the way that it was set up before because it was based on the consumer price index. And now it will be based solely on the determination of full-time minimum wage, which is done every August annually. So that is also a benefit to our lower income residents because they will actually get the benefit of a slight adjustment to that child support based off of their full-time minimum wage status. We have additional things that will be happening in years to come. We will have changes to our pleading practices that was also part of Senate Bill 343. But we know that this initial step is making a difference in the lives of the families that we serve. Thank you and if there are any questions for us. That was surprise from Miley just for the record. Thank you for that presentation and the updates on the legislation. I have to admit this is not an area that I'm that familiar with, so my questions might be a little bit elementary. So when we talk about performance measures from the federal government and like paternity establishment, which apparently we're doing very well with. How does that work for custodial parents that are incarcerated, for example? Do you establish eternity and then work through some arrangements on support? So it depends on how we get the case. Number one, so our paternity establishment is part of our effort in terms of we go to court and we actually establish parentage, but there is a voluntary parentage declaration that we work with all the hospitals and social services and they have the ability to voluntarily declare that they're the parent of the child. When custodial parents, if we don't have a referral, then in those cases we wouldn't get that case. If we had a mother that was incarcerated, we wouldn't get that case unless their mother had previously applied for our services or enrolled in our services or unless they had previously been on cow works and in those cases lots of things. But when someone's incarcerated, our child support is suspended during that incarceration period. And so, or if we know that they're incarcerated, when we get our case open, child support is set at zero. Okay, that's helpful. So on the legislation that became effective in May of this year, so when you talk about applying the collections to arrears and basically pass-throughs, when you talked about about waiting for income tax leans, or do you accumulate that in a fun and then it gets distributed? Or how does that work? So every month, our system tracks every month when a child support payment, when someone has a child support order, how much it is and whether that payment has come through. We have an interface with the federal government for IRS and for FTB for state taxes. And when the money comes in, I'm notwithstanding if it's a joint return, there might be a hold on that money for until, to make sure that the other person doesn't have a claim to the money, but outside of that, that money goes out directly to the families. Thank you. What's the progress on your move out of Pleasanton? Haven't haven't made that yet. So we're we're working on it. Okay, because I heard that we're going to have other options in the future. Where were the where you think I'm moving to? I don't know, trying to? I don't know. I'm trying to, we don't know just yet. It's a child support was in Oakland and moved out to Pleasant's, so you're not sure where are you going to move into at the moment? Well, the county is working together with a lot of the departments to figure out how we best serve our customers. So we're part of that group. You're in rental space, right? You're in lease space? Yes. Right, right. Well, let me follow up with you and GSA about that. Yeah, I don't care if you're moving, but obviously we want to get you out of lease space possible. How are we stacking up with other counties? That's my big concern. So I think in our performance measurements, what we are seeing is that as it relates to order establishment, we are starting to see lots more progress than we have in the past. As it relates to our performance measurement as for current support, we are struggling in that area area and I think that is because of the high level of unemployment that we have in the case load that we have. So that's why we are looking to make sure that we have some partners. As it relates to our arrears performance, we still remain in the top five. I'm not sure that we're number one this year, but we are either two or three in that category. So what steps are being, so just the partner piece that's the only step that's being taken or there are other things that are being done to try to improve our performance? So yeah, we are in terms of the collections yeah we're trying to we've working with lots of different strategies, partnership, employment is really one of those conversations to try to see if there's an opportunity to help our parents gain employment so that they can pay their child support. So that's one of the discussions we are continually having. We are doing a structure and reorganization in our organization so that we are best able to utilize the staffing and we're doing a lot of learning as it relates to collaborative negotiations how to really be customer centered and be able to talk to people and meet them where they are. I see the greatest percentage are located in Oakland, whether custody or non-custody in the greater, greater percentage is African American as well. Do you have any, any kind of sense of how we can bring those numbers down or make improvements in those areas or it's once again as just around employment and other things. I think they're still around employment and I do think they still are connected to the partnerships that we have, right? I think we will see some some differences. We have what we call uncollectable debt. I think maybe last year I talked about that at this committee meeting, but we are working to reduce the debt that people have. And then we believe, or that's the theory, that when people have a clean slate and they're able to start paying and they don't have the other past due support to worry about, then there is a great possibility that they can consistently pay. I think what we will also see is a change as it relates to this new guideline, this legislation is going to make, I believe make a really big difference because the child support amounts are going to go down. And with that child support amount going down, we didn't have any ability to modify them below guideline prior to this. But with this going down, it allows for people to be able to meet their obligations if a person that's working minimum wage 40 hours a week prior to this change how much was their child support and how much is it now? With $543 before now it is 323. So I think that's a significant change. You have someone in Alameda County working minimum wage 40 hours a week with a guideline child support order going to court with a guideline child support order of $500. Now there is that $200 difference. I'm sure that people would say, well, that's really still too much. But I think that really makes it easier, I don't say easier, makes it more likely that someone might can pay that child support and also reduces the accumulation of past due arrears. And that's piece of data is showed us of the non-costodial parent. And you have the numbers that are active employed, but you're not sure of the numbers who are not employed. So what we have in our system is active employment for, we show people that are employed and usually with those that are actively employed, we are able to send out a notice to withhold or wage assignment and do our collections from there. When we have their case information and there's no employment, it's not that they may not be employed, but it's usually that they're not a W-2 wage earner. So the other thing that we're looking to see more state legislation and more national legislation is that the gig economy with what is considered independent contractors and how people are making money now is we're trying to modernize and catch that up in the child support program because it's really hard to capture that information. And so, unless employers are, or in these types of industries, are mandated to report this information, we don't know for sure if someone is employed or just are unemployed. So 45% is no active employer. So that just means you're not sure if they're employed or not. There's because the data is not in their file. Yes, not in the file. And we get reports from EDD, new higher registry. Those are all automatic interfaces in our system. And so usually means that there's not W2 wage earnings. They could be self-employed. They could be working in industries that don't report, which means that we have to do a lot of and guess investigation on those types of cases. Are they required to notify you if they're employed or not? Oh, yes. That doesn't usually happen, but sure. But they don't. But they don't. And I think the, I mean, I think I keep emphasizing this because I really believe it's really important. I emphasize building partnerships and building the reputation so that other agencies can vouch for us. Because when you open a child support, when a child support case is open, there's a great possibility that based on the system and the processes that all child support agencies go through in California There's a great possibility that we may or may not have talked to that other person that's obligated to pay child support And part of that's because we send out notices we send out letters we serve But because they don't want to work with us they they avoid us, which then puts them in this situation where there's debt accumulation. And so really working to change our reputation and working to build relationships. So other people can be the ambassadors and vouch for us. I think that has been one of my primary focuses. And I think just one last question. Has there ever been, because I can't recall, Thelous, a moratorium on debt collection? So like, if you come in and provide us with information and want to kind of get right, we'll forgive that or we'll cut it down or reduce it or whatever? Well, we haven't had an amnesty program like that, but we do have a debt reduction program, but that debt reduction program is for those that received public assistance. And it's a pretty aggressive program, so all they need to do, we've been publicizing that debt reduction program. I can next time I come, I can give you an update of the amount of careers that we have written off the books so to say, but yes, we do have a pretty good debt reduction program. As you said, it's only for those on receiving some type of assistance. Only for those who have either are currently assisted or were previously assisted. Is there any merit to providing it to everyone? And legally can you do that? Legally we can't do that. I see. They would have the person where the air. So when a person goes on Cal works, they assign their rights to child support to the collections of those rights to child support to the county. A person that's not on Cal works that money is theirs and they would have to agree I don't want it. All right. Do we have any speakers on this item? I have no speakers right? All right. Okay. Thank you for this update today. Thank you for this update today. Thank you. Okay. Right. So what's next? Yeah. So next we'll invite to the podium to provide an adult protective services update. Sonja Frost, who is the division director over aging and adult protection and Pamela Powell, who's a program manager over division of aging and adult protection, both Department of Adult and Aging Services. Faith Battles is not with us today because she's at a conference out of county. Good afternoon, President Meile and supervisor Tam and greenings to all on behalf of Director Ford and Assistant Agency Director Battles. My name is Pamela Powell and I am the Program Manager for Adult Protective Services. And say with me, I have Division Director's Sonia Frost. So just as a quick recap, Adult Protective Services is a state mandated program that investigates and responds to reports of elder abuse and dependent adult abuse when these individuals are unable to meet their own needs or are victims of abuse, neglect, or exploitation. Today we'll be providing a data-driven overview of adult protective services, which includes information on current caseloads, allegations, and investigations, updates on our home safe program program and our key program highlights. So between July 1st, 2023 and June 30th, 2024, the APS program received a total of 8,937 reports of abuse, which is an increase of 1,588 from the previous fiscal year. Of those reports, 2,563, either did not meet our criteria or the allegation had previously been reported. Of the 6,374 reports that were open for investigation, 36% were due to self-neglect, 28.2% were due to financial abuse, 11.7% were due to neglects by others, and 11.7% were also due to psychological abuse, such as forms of serious emotional distress that's brought about by intimidating behaviors, threats, harassment, and verbal assault. Over the next few slides, we'll look at some specific allegations and demographics. The numbers we're presenting today represent the Adult Protective Services Program over the last three fiscal years. Having served 13,000 in seven unduplicated clients who came to our attention through 16,500 and seven reports of abuse. It is important to note that many reports received by the APS program involved multiple allegations. With that, APS completed investigations of 29,000 in four allegations for the benefit of our clients in the community. So I'll quickly go over our clients' demographics. So this represents the past three fiscal years. 81.6% identified as English speaking, and 2.9% identified as Spanish speaking, and we have the other languages listed up there as well. 34.7% of our clients identified as white, 21.9% identified as black or African American, 11.7% identified as Asian, Asian American, or Pacific Islander, and 8% identified as Latinx, and less than 0.3% identified as native or Alaskan American. Now I'll talk about gender. So female clients make up 55% of APS investigations. Mells comprise 38% of the client population and trans, non-binary and other gendered individuals make up a combined 0.56%. While gender is unknown for approximately 6% of individuals, concerted efforts have been made by the APS program to capture this data. Specifically, in the previous year, 8% of gender data was unknown compared to 6% currently. The program intends to continue strengthening our management of training on and use of the database systems designed to continue reducing this percentage. Now I'll talk about age. So clients age 60 and above make up just over 90% of APS clients. For their individuals in their 70s make up the majority of the APS population, which has been a consistent trend over the past three fiscal years. Clients identifying as straight or heterosexual make up 55.8% of clients, 24.3% is unknown, and the LGBTQIA plus clients represent 3.3%, which is an increase from less than 1% reported during the previous year. And with that, I'll hand it over to our division director, Sonia Frost. Good afternoon. So just some of the statistics based on geographical location, which should be no surprise, a city of Oakland. We get the majority of phone calls and we do investigations from the city of Oakland in all categories. As you can see, it's kind of equal between clients that are self-nic-leg, financial exploitation, which is huge, and then abuses by other categories followed by city of Hayward and Berkeley. And you can see, but in Oakland, we're around the last three fiscal years close to like 6,000 cases. So a lot of reporting comes from the city of Oakland. Next slide, please. OK, and now we're just going to go over a few highlights of our Home Safe Pilot Program. And that is our housing program that is in-house. So with our Home safe program it is a housing first model which simply means that housing is the primary need. All other issues and challenges are secondary so we want to make sure that all of our clients are placed in some form of housing. With home safe, it supports the safety and housing stability of APS clients who are experiencing or at risk of homelessness. This program within Alameda County was established in 2018 or 2018 in the state of California with about a $15 million budget and at that time it served 24 counties. The program was extended through June 2025 and the state of California received $2.92.5 million dollar allocations and this was shared across all counties in California. In-house and Alameda County, a good deal of how we run our home safe program is that we partner with our contracted providers and with the use of a real basic model for health and housing services, and the ratio with our contracted providers is one staff member to between 15 and 25 clients. These are strategic partnerships that we have with the California Department of Social Services, Changewell Project, and the homeless continuum of care. Approximately 391 clients have been served in Alameda County to date with 174 clients, which is about 45% of the clients who enrolled in the last fiscal year 2324. 98 cases have been successfully closed with clients receiving appropriate services and attaining a degree of housing stability. The last bullet is ongoing data collection in case follow up at the 6 and 12 month post closure period to measure the real reliability and validity of the program. So that is what we're currently doing now is following up with our home safe participants to see how well they're doing and if they're better off as a result of the support they received. Next slide. So now I'll talk about the first two key highlights. So we aligned this with the 10x goals. So to eliminate homelessness, APS expanded our home safe program, which Sonia just talked about, to our service delivery across four contracts to provide housing-related legal assistance, specifically with like the eviction prevention, housing-related intensive case management, housing navigation, housing direct financial assistance, and supportive independent living housing units for individuals referred to APS at risk of experiencing homelessness. The next one is eliminate poverty and hunger, so APS has increased community outreach and engagement efforts to inform the public about resources and supports available to vulnerable populations. In fiscal year 2324, APS has presented to over 300 mandated reporters, approximately 150 seniors and caregivers, and 11 community-based organizations. And this is done in-house by one of our APS supervisors. I'll hand it back over to you. And so I think one of the most critical highlights is employment for all. And currently in APS, we are struggling probably like other departments with staffing. It is critical that we address our staffing needs. Currently we have 11 APS worker twos and three APS supervisor vacancies and our goal is that we want to expand the APS workforce to meet the growing needs of the program as you have heard us share the numbers of cases our staff go out on. Some of the efforts that we've made is that APS published a recruitment video available on our public facing website called a day in a life of APS worker and that was some of our very own staff who I should say start in the wonderful video that we had. We recently had done probably last year a proposal to expand our program to meet the needs of the growing client base, and that's been presented to our agency director, Andrea Ford, which included hiring an additional program manager along with additional APS workers and supervisors positions. This plan will be impacted by limited funding in the APS budget this fiscal year compared to previous fiscal years. In terms of retention efforts, three professional development convenience were attended by 16 staff members, which resulted in presentations to key internal stakeholders, the design of a training, a E module available for all staff, refinement of our financial abuse specialist team, other efforts. We have MOUs to include more expansive audience and the adoption of evidence- and form strategies for expanding our local level elder justice network. And then finally, we have our MSW internship program. So last year was, I guess we restarted the program. We had one intern. This year we have four interns and we've expanded our reach. So to three local universities, Cal Berkeley, San Jose State, and then Cal State East Bay. And then lastly, one of our goals is a crime-free county and APS successfully hosted an inaugural law enforcement forum, which was well attended. We had presentations from our APS supervisors, the district attorney's office, and the county veteran service office as well. And attendees represent at 15 agencies across the county, 15 police jurisdictions across the county. So that concludes our presentation and we will take any questions you may have from us. Thank you very much for that presentation on the update. Had a couple of questions on, when you talked about the case movement statistics you said there's been an increase to 8,937 reports of abuse and then you broke down the total number of reports that were open for investigation. How do we have a way of tracking whether these investigations were resolved and how do you consider it being resolved? Is it like example with the psychological and mental abuse? Is it a referral to a mental health care professional for that individual and then similarly with the financial exploitation, it's a referral because those are basically almost your top two actions. Yeah, so most APA cases we want to keep open no longer than 60 days, but most of our cases can extend for financial abuse cases because we have to work with banks, we work with the district attorney's office. So those cases tend to could linger on really depending on what matter is presented before us. But some cases we are able to successfully close. We do have those numbers. I don't think we tracked, brought our close cases here today. And then in regards to other allegations such as, you know, other types of abuse, it is referral based. So sometimes we work with our public guardian, public conservator program, which also sits under my division. And so sometimes we refer those cases to the public guardian, public conservator, and going through the court process and trying to get the case approved and get an assigned guardian. Those cases can also kind of take some time to do that. So yeah, a lot of our cases extend. Some of our quicker cases may be what we call self-niclect or more of what your hoarding cases are when we go in houses and the house is hoarded and it's a safety issue. So we want to make sure that we alleviate the safety risk. And those are quicker because we have contracted providers. We can call them and they do clean outs. And then those cases sometimes are more simple to close out. But in addition to we have case management agencies that we work with. So a lot of those long term cases we will refer so that there's a case manager that could work a little bit more closely with our client just to make sure, you know, like they're safe and all the issues that they have are addressed. Okay, when you said there was been an increase, is it because there's a greater awareness of EPS or is there just more incentives to report or because like, you know, meals and wheels delivers to seniors and I guess sometimes there's some observations in those situations, but how come we're seeing this increase? Well, the need is greater for sure, but yeah, we've been doing a lot of community engagement. So, you know, some of the APS supervisors, you know, we get invited to a lot of community engagement events where people want us to present on APS and our services. And you know, we also table at the Alameda County Fair. So we gave all of our resources out. So yeah, it's definitely trying to get the word out and knowing that our services exist. We have also a lot of, you know, partners in APS. So they reach out to us as well. So referrals come from so many different directions, but yeah, it definitely shows the increase. And I think definitely the pandemic definitely affected or exposed a lot of clients like, you know, loneliness, isolation, and so numbers begin to go up during that time as well. Okay, I appreciate that. So you went from identifying the types of investigations on the abuses and then you jumped to the home safe pilot program. So like the example you gave, if somebody was isolated or there's loneliness or self neglect, that wouldn't necessarily be solved by moving them to a different residence or because most of the abuse cases are not necessarily related to the need for housing, right? No, housing is an issue, but most of our kind of, our theme is like to help people age in place. So if there is any way that, again, we can mitigate the safety risks or minimize those safety risks that they can live in house, that is definitely our first goal. We don't tend to move people. If people are moved to facilities, it's typically maybe police or fire. And we support that or coming from the hospital where they need a high level of care, skilled nursing facility, or things of that nature. We support that, but we don't move clients to facilities. But if there is a discharge, then we can work with the facility to set up a plan. So when this person goes home to ensure that they have the necessities that they need in terms of food shelter and clothing? Okay. Yeah. So when you look at the demographics, a lot of your clients are in the 70s and 80s. And so how is this coordinated with AAA and some of our 10x goals with that like aging in place and also providing the appropriate programs Whether it's housing food insecurity, you know guaranteed basic income because that is kind of like An overall All environment that can help address some of these issues. Yeah, well APS and triple A area agency on agency is one of the programs that sits under our division as well. So we have a great partnership with them but APS in itself we have a lot of resources and funding that we can support our client base with. Typically, like those who may have a greater need and again, meet more long-term support, we connect them with our case management agencies who may then partner with some of the agencies which in Tripway, as you know, they have like 90 plus contracts around food and things of that nature. But we do APS, we have again home safe, which is housing. Of course, based on the housing need, a majority of our clients, we place them in hotel rooms or what we call our seal, which is our supervised independent living beds that we have. We have some guarantee beds partnered and we can place some of our clients there, but trying to connect people with Section 8 and lower housing that tends to take some time in terms of services and resources that we can offer them. For those in that age bracket. Yeah. Well, part of the older adults, what we know is that of course as you get older, you need more support. So I think that's pretty much been consistent that age around 70, you know, sometimes clients have, you know, health begins to decline, you know, you get dementia, Alzheimer's is very common around at age groups, so they tend to need more support in those age groups. How does our service work with the unhoused population? How does APS work with that? ours is referral based. So it still works the same way people call into our hotline. And then that case is assessed and assigned to an APS worker who will go out and do the investigation portion. And if there's a housing need, again, they refer to our home safe program. A lot of our supervisors, man, the home safe cases, and, you know, we're working on getting labor agreements for our workers to carry those cases. So a lot of our supervisors take care of like the housing cases. And they're pretty much placed in a motel room. I mean, we have done rent support if someone has gotten behind on their rent. So, you know, we do a lot of different support services through our home safe program. How much of the referrals do you have that need the home safe program? So currently we have 391 clients that we've served in total in the home safe program, but we're seeing that rise in that need. And so as the word is getting out, because home safe is not just for currently unhoused clients, but it's also to mitigate the risk of homelessness. So if someone's currently going through any victim, we work with the Sheriff's Department, if someone like Sonia said is behind on rents or whatever it is that we can do to prevent actually being on health. Okay, so 391 out of the 8,900 cases. Okay,900 cases. Thank you. Right. So, the supervisor to him has asked some of my questions, because I too was interested in the fact that the numbers that go up in fiscal year 2324, and you kind of outline why you think the numbers went up almost 1600 more reported cases. You said some of us might be due to loneliness. Does that mean the pandemic and greater awareness? Yeah, I mean, yeah, that's why I believe the numbers have increased. Just word of mouth and people being more aware of our services. We also have done some public service announcements as well. So just many ways that people find out about our services. So just kind of give me a sense of reassurance. So over the last, let's say 10 years, if you can kind of think about it, have we seen numbers go up, stay steady, decline, or do you know? Well, I've only been an APS not quite four years, but I will think that the numbers have steadily increased. Oh, thank you. Yeah. And it might also be attributable to the fact that the older adult population is increasing too. Yes. That might be a factor. Mm-hmm. So, it'd be interesting. Do we receive this report annually? Does this come? Yes, we present here annually. It'd be interesting. If you could maybe make a notation when you come back next year, if you could kind of give us kind of like a trend line, how it's grown over the years and maybe what you might attribute that to. Okay. Yeah. We tried to do the last three fiscal years. That was your recommendation last year. So in the numbers that we provided was the last three fiscal years. But if you want us to go further. Yeah. So these numbers are from the last? Yes. OK. But it has been training upwards. Because that's a, I mean, it's kind of disturbing that it's training upwards. But I need to understand if I should be disturbed because the more people are getting abused, or I shouldn't be disturbed because you know the awareness is greater so you so the reports are coming in if the awareness had been great back earlier than we had gotten you know those numbers then and the pandemic and the senior public so that's what I'm trying to I'm kind of struggling with at the moment if I should be disturbed that you know just think of it in this context. If more seniors are getting abused out there, that's problematic. That's kind of what I'm trying to get a sense of. I would say yes, but I would also say, I think it's a good thing because APS has a lot of resources. So we're really a resource-based program. And so because of what we're able to provide, you know, then we're able to really assist families as well as, you know, our aging and disabled adults through the program and resources that we have. So yes, I think abuse is, you know, more prevalent, but also, you know, yeah, APS has grown as a result of that. I mean, again, I've only been the division director of this program for a little shy of four years, but even during that time, we actually increased the program by two additional units just to try to address the needs. It's just unfortunate that we're experiencing a lot of attrition and we need to hire up, but in addition to hiring to backfill, we probably estimated that we probably need another three to four APS units to really address all the calls that come in. So at this time, we really have to be selective about which cases we go out, which are more of your higher risk cases, the cases that are low risk. Sometimes we can't always address those cases because we just don't have the manpower to do so. Okay, I'm gonna kinda have some questions about that in a second, so I'm not gonna go down that road yet. But I am gonna go there. I'm curious with the statistics that you indicated APS response response to abuse neglect and exploitation and the numbers in Oakland. So there's financial exploitation, self-neclect and abuse by others. That abuse by others, what's, is that also, is that contained psychological and mental abuse, physical abuse? What's included there? Yeah, psychological, physical, could be sexual abuse as well. Okay. The other abuse categories. So that's all of the other abuse. Yes. And it's really striking that it's so much in Oakland. I mean, it's almost 6,000 cases. Yes, or calls, I should say. And this is from fiscal year. Yeah, counts of allegation. From fiscal year 21,2 through the last 2324 Oakland probably because it's the largest city in Alameda County as well and I think in terms of Social service users the majority of them come from the city of Oakland. So I think it's just representative of that. But Fremont's the second largest city, but they're not the second largest. Right. Right. Okay. and What This is hard. This is hard to fathom Do we have any this might not be within your Lane I'm just curious are there any interventions we can make to try to deal with this level of Abuse that's occurring in Oakland. In Oakland, I mean it just you know in terms of financial abuse which I mean in Oakland the abuse categories are equally across and I think again is just you know community awareness which is a good thing because people are calling us and we are be, you know, able to go out and assess and provide services and resources to, you know, our client base. But, um, I'm not sure how we can prevent abuse. I mean, we're trying to get the word out that, you know, if this is happening, you know, there is help available. And so really our message is if you see something, say something. So yeah. And then the hiring. So how many folks are in your unit or how many folks work at APS? I'll let the program manage our address. So currently we have seven different units and one is our MSWR community outreach unit. So really it's six units to our intake units and then the other four are community outreach units. So really it's six units too, our intake units, and then the other four are community response units. So I daily we would have seven supervisors. Currently we have five, and we're staffed for up to 39, so 40 APS worker two's and we're currently at 29. How many? 29. 29. And how many? 29. 29. So the staffing shortage that you're experiencing, because I get the sense of having looked at the report and then what you said, staffing shortage or the vacancies, that is affecting the ability to deliver services. Yes. Yeah, so yeah, it impacts the staff's ability to go out. So we pretty much have to triage cases again like our high risk cases, some of our, what we call moderate risk cases, we may go out on, but some of the lower risk cases, either it it'll be a delay in our staff being able to get out and investigate because they have to prioritize some of the risk in the cases that they investigate. But yeah, this just year, I think it's been like 10, 11 workers that have left for various reasons. Oh really? Yeah. And two supervisors, so yeah. Are you at Liberty just kind of give us an idea of the reasons? I don't know what name is but. No, there's been a few retirements. Some have resigned due to medical reasons and then I would say the majority of them have, you know, found other employment and chosen to be successful elsewhere. It's because of compensation in benefits. No, Alameda County plays. We're pretty, we pay pretty well. Well, it's not the issue. So, yeah, it's tough work, though. It's tough work. So sometimes people have to make decisions for, you know, their well-being. What's best for them? Okay, and the video a day in the life of an APS worker. Is that video still? That's a recruitment video? That's yeah, that's the intent is to let people know what we do every day and hopefully we'll get people to join us. I mean one of the good things that's happening throughout the state is with the MSW program, Master of Social Work program. They started a program at the state of California to specifically recruit social workers to go into what we call the gerontology or working with older adults because, you know, as you look at the statistics, you know, people are living longer, so there's a greater need. I came from the foster care system after 26 years and, you know, the foster care numbers are trending downward, you know, people aren't having as many babies, great thing, children aren't coming into the system as much, but our older population is increasing. So as you get older, you need more assistance. That's what we're here for. Is that a video still on your website or okay? Yes. We'll take a look at it. Okay. It's on the website and it'll be in our agency's e-publication this month as well. So one is about a year old and one is probably a few months old. So one is to recruit social workers and adult and aging services and one is to recruit adult protective services social workers. I'll try to take a look at that. And then I was just kind of replexed. Why do we have so few interns? What's that all about? We're actually one of the counties that have a greater number of interns and we went from one to four and so really just if you look at their trend in social work there's not a lot of folks that are just getting into social work so even the universities are struggling with having folks to go into this field and so we were really really excited that we were able to have four in-surns come on with us this year. And our goal is to continue expanding. Interesting. And we were able to offer, what is it, $4,000 stipend for each of the interns? So we use some of our funding to offer the intern stipend. So yeah. OK. All right. Very public speakers on this item. Have no speakers on item three. All right. Thank you for this. Thank you very much. Have a great day. All right. Our final presentation is an update on refugee assistance and supportive services. We last had the community based organizations here February 26th of 2024 and we also had our staff to sort of co-present with the community based organizations. What we have today is Ramon Zimani who's a program specialist in workforce and benefits administration, Shane Rogi, who's a program services coordinator and the Department of Workforce and benefits administration and maybe some serial partners. Are there those CBO partners out there? Thank you. Thank you. Good afternoon, President Miley and Mr. Wysert. Thank you for the opportunity to have a follow-up presentation related to refugees assistance and supportive services this afternoon. Today we will cover the following. A brief summary of our county public assistance program and services we presented in our January's presentation, a brief summary of refugee supportive services provided by contracted community-based organizations, a summary of reception and placement services by residential agencies, refugee supportive services contracts, services provided and funded services provided and funding sources related to refugee supportive services contract, and newcomers needs for the first 90 days assessment and funding gaps and social services agencies recommendations. Refugees who settle in the United States have access to, they have rarely unlimited access to personal resources in their home countries and sources of income in the United States when they first arrive. To sustain themselves until they become self-sufficient, refugees may apply for public assistance benefits. Benefits includes cash assistance, which is 12 months for RCA clients or 60 months for call works for those with eligible children. Medical for the medical needs, mental health is also included, call fresh or California Food Assistance Program for the food and nutrition needs and refugee supportive services. Other supportive services include services to address barriers to employment after enrollment in public assistance program, transportation assistance, limited to travel to of from work activities, job sites or child school or daycare, childcare assistance, diaper allowances, domestic violence services, and homeless assistance. Recipients of cash assistance are also enrolled in Refugee Supportive Services Program. The purpose of the ORIRS or Refugee Supportive Services is to help refugees adjust their and to assist them to become self-sufficient as soon as possible. Key program components are employment services to provide job readiness, job search, job placement, and job retention and re-employment services, vocational English as a second language classes to assist participants to become employed, social adjustment and social integration services, case management so that they are linked to critical resources, that assist them in becoming integrated members of the American society and attend self-sufficiency. Services for older refugees program to decrease the social isolation among older refugees. Participants will receive services including language and citizenship training. They will also be provided with recreational activities and involvement in various community events. Traffic and crime victims' assistant program is the accessible non-citizen victims of trafficking and domestic violence and fulfilling their immediate needs, getting the scales needed for finding employment and gaining economic independence. Housing assistance for Afghan and Ukrainian parolis and other new arrivals as permitted by the federal regulations. In this slide we provide a summary of reception and placement program, Auren Pee. Auren-P program is part of the US refugee admission program. It provides initial assistance to refugee upon their arrival in the United States. Refugee is selected for resettlement through the US refugee Programme or eligible for ORMP assistance. The program offers services such as housing, food, clothing, cultural orientation and assistance with accessing employment, medical and legal services. These services are typically provided for up to 90 days after the refugee's arrival. Non-profit resettlement agencies under a cooperative agreement with the Department of State sponsors and support these new arrivals. The goal is to help refugees stabilize and move towards self-sufficiency. Funding for refugee resettlement mainly come from the State Department particularly through the migration and refugee assistance account. Pre-arrival set up includes arrangement to meet the families need. The cases are assigned to national resettlement agencies and are assured by local agencies. US ties that local family and friends orientation is conducted, and arrival plan is created, including housing, meals, car seats, pocket money, transportation, and language line interpretation services. At arrival, the family is picked up from the airport and introduced to staff in the resettlement program, and given home safety and cultural orientation. First, 30 days services include assistance with public and employment benefits, social security applications, health screening benefits, and resources, orientation, client rights and responsibilities, school enrollments, and immunization, updating address with the Department of Homeless Security, and selective services. First, 90 days services include application for California ID, work authorization, bank accounts, and public housing benefits, ongoing cultural orientations, and creation of service plan with goals. Additional services support services are available from Alameda County. Social Services Agency has covered in the previous slides. Resetlement Agency data shows Alameda and our neighboring counties have received 1,508 unduplicated arrivals between October 1st, 2023 and August 30th, 2024. International Rescue Committee Oakland has received 736 arrivals, 335, which resettled in Alameda County, and is projected to receive 886 arrivals through September 30th of 2024. Jewish family and community services East Bay has received 388 arrivals, 158 which have resettled in Alameda County and they are projected to receive 415 arrivals through September 30th, 2024. Jewish Family Services, Silicon Valley, has received 384 arrivals, 57, which have resettled in Alameda County, and they are projected to receive a total of 470 arrivals through September 30th, 2024. The number of total arrivals, as well as those resettled to Alameda County matter. As we understand that after resettlement many individuals may relocate due to the cost of housing in Alameda and in her neighboring counties. Do the needs of a refugee community in Alameda County, the Alameda County Social Services Agency, which I'll refer to as ACSSA, currently has three refugee services. Refugee support services related contracts in place to meet our needs. Each has been procured through Request for Proposal or RFP. Our social integration contract was last sent to bid in 2020. Bids were received from Refugee and Immigrant Transitions and Global Communication and Education and Art Local. Refugee and Immigrant Transitions was our highest scoring bidder. Our trafficking and crime victims assistance program contract was also last sent to bid in 2020. A single bid was received from the International Rescue Committee, Oakland, who met all requirements of the RFP. Our employment services, vocational English is a second language, and social adjustment contract, which I'll refer to as our LEP contract, was last sent to bid in 2020. Bids were received from Laugh family, community development, and incorporated, and Laugh familiar. To remove challenges of a single organization, delivering the variety of services that are included in this contract, social services recommended the creation of a consortium to allow the expertise and resources of several Alameda County organizations to be led by the two bidders, one in the north and the other in the south portion of the county. From those RFP contract procurements, the following contracts are in place. Our social integration contract provides social integration and services for older refugees county-wide. Services are delivered by Refugee and Immigrant Transitions and subcontractor, Verma Refugee Families and newcomers. The federally funded contract has a five-year term and through August, 2026, will provide refugees with social integration services assisting with the transition into the United States and provides for services and activities, specific to the needs of our older senior refugees. The federal funding for this program and all other refugee support services programs requires enrollment in the RSS program to utilize that available federal funding. Therefore, Alameda County Social Services can only utilize the federal funding to support clients who have enrolled and been approved for RSS Services in Alameda County. In our LEP programs contract, the consortium in the North County is led by a allow family community development incorporated and it includes the International Rescue Committee Oakland, Refugee and Immigrant Forum, Burma, Refugee Families and Newcomers, Laney College, and East Bay Refugee and Immigrant Forum. The South County Consortium is led by Lafamilia and it includes the International Rescue Committee Oakland, Burma Refugee Families and Newcomers, Hayward Adult School, and Fremont Adult and Continuing Education. The state and federally funded contract, as titled, provides employment and language services to refugees, learning English as a second language, and it assists with creating financial, self-sufficiency plans, and achievement of goals through employment, while also assisting with the transition into the United States. Our housing assistance for Ukrainians' program is under this contract. Through case management services and referrals, and utility support, they are provided to all eligible individuals. The contract also includes East Bay Refugee and Immigrant Forums' responsibility for management of the East Bay Refugee meetings, the East Bay Refugee Steering Committee, World Refugee and Immigrant Day, and our newcomers website. Our trafficking and crime victims assistance programs contracted services are provided countywide by the International Rescue Committee, Oakland. This state and federally funded program provide services to assist eligible non-citizen victims of trafficking and domestic violence in fulfilling their immediate needs and getting the skills needed for finding employment and gaining economic independence. Through RFP procured contracts, over $16 million is being infused in a direct client services within our refugee support services programs. In March 2024, Receman agencies identified their ask for housing, transportation, and employment services costs associated to supporting the needs of newcomers resettling in Alameda County. ACSSA, complete an assessment of these needs, and factors considered included, services required by the organization's performing federally directed reception and placement, the needs of newcomers during various stages of their first 90 days, and the availability of services eligible to newcomers resettling in Alameda County. When assessing the three major issues identified by resettlement agencies in their ask for funding, it was found that housing, transportation, and access to employment services are required reception and placement services. However, the available funding provided by the federal government to support those required services needed by newcomers for those extended periods is insufficient. In Alameda County, ACSSA uses federal and state funds to provide supportive housing services for newcomers. Federal and state funding is also used by ACSSA to deliver employment and transportation services to support the needs of newcomers. Additionally, ACSSA uses a variety of federal and state funding for the delivery of programs, services, and contracts that assist with meeting the major needs of newcomers as identified by the resettlement agencies. What is UNMET is establishing economic stability for newcomers. It is a programmatic goal for newcomers to utilize programs and services to help build toward self-sufficiency and attainment of economic stability. However, with the considerable transition that newcomers face within those first 90 days in the United States, economic stability is not identified as a truly attainable goal for most newcomers in those first 90 days. ACSSA sees collaborative efforts with resettlement agencies as our best means to create a bridge to provide newcomers with access to resources needed to support their major needs and expedited submission of public assistance benefits application being key to establishing and maintaining the bridge to access supportive services needed for a newcomers transition period into the United States, which leads to our recommendations. Sorry, I missed that slide. I apologize for that. ACSA must continuously assess the needs of the community and align those needs with federal and state policies and county refugees plan. Currently, ACSSA provides public assistance benefits, programs and services which meet many of the major needs identified by the resettlement agency. Upon receipt of public assistance benefits, newcomers are eligible for those employment, language, transportation, social adjustment and housing support of needs. In addition to the programs, services and contracts currently available to assist newcomers, Alameda County could utilize county general funds to procure a recurring housing and transportation contract to further support newcomers assisted by our local resettlement agencies with reception and placement in Alameda County. If considered by the board, the contract would require annual funding, and an RFP procurement could result in a contract support unmet housing and transportation needs for newcomers whose federal resettlement funds have been depleted and they are not in receipt of public assistance benefits. Additionally, resettlement agencies can assist with early submission of public assistance applications. They can continue their efforts to increase resettlement funding through the Department of State. They can ask other refugee impacted counties to accept RSS funding and provide employment services in their counties. They can continue alternative federal funding requests for refugee resettlement and they can connect with the Afghan Support Investment Program. The California Department of Social Services created this program to support the transition of recent AFK and newcomers to long-term housing and to attain self-sufficiency in California. An additional item of note regarding recommendations is at ACSSA and our local resettlement agencies collaborated on a legislative request for increased resettlement funding. While proposals were submitted for committee review, the enforcing were not selected to be funded. Thank you for allowing us to present to you today, and at this time do you have any questions in relation to today's presentation. Thank you for that presentation and update. So last year, the Jewish family and community services of the East Bay, along with IRC came to the board committee. And at that time, I was informed that there was an issue between the refugees that actually settle in the county versus in Santa Clara County. And so how does the allocation work between counties? Is it based on the refugees that settle that get the services or do they get basically initiated in another county and come to a different county and there's different fundings based on where they land? There's, I think there's two parts to that question. There is the funding associated to the reception I think there's two parts to that question. There is the funding associated to the reception and placement that comes through the resummoned agencies that defines where they go to, but then there's also a different bracket of funding. And that funding is coming through from the state of California who identifies what our numbers are for location of individuals here in the state. And then they issue out funding appropriate to what they see fit at the state level and they use their own algorithms to determine what those numbers will be. May I ask which one of those two you referring to? I'm referring to the request from those agencies for the county to assist with the housing portion of it. Correct, I just wanted to make sure in terms of that, because there's funding, again, that comes from the federal government for the placement that's settled. And I think that may not be the portion you're referring to. You're talking more about how are utilizing the existing state and federal funding through our contracts to support the housing for those individuals. Yes, so with that, we would only be providing support through our funded programs to anyone that's enrolled in receiving public assistance benefits in Alameda County So by default if a person was in Santa Clara County and in their program They would actually be working with Santa Clara County to utilize their services and programs that exist there once they're Relocated in Alameda County then it would be the funding funding that set by Alameda County to be able to serve those needs. So when they were asking last year, was it for those that were intaked into Alameda County and then ended up in Santa Clara County? I think the biggest part that I can recall from that conversation when we were here, there was questions about the individuals who were receiving services in primarily Silicon Valley, the Jewish Family Services Silicon Valley group. They have a large number of people who are in Santa Clara County and they have a number of people who are also being relocated to Alameda County. And in their process, one of the things that was discussed was the employment services scope of the work that was being done. And there was some comments or some questions that were raised about the services being provided and there being a preference by many of their clientele of staying with them in Santa Clara County and being served in Santa Clara County, but we would identify that there's actually those employment services available here in Alameda County, and that's what kind of led to the ongoing discussion that was there, and why I think we were asked to provide an assessment and to look at this situation. In regards to the housing needs, we clearly identify and agree with the resettlement agencies. For individuals who are moving to Alameda County, there is an insufficient amount of money being received from the federal government to be able to do what they're asking them to do. As was mentioned in the last presentation, Alameda County is getting the same amount of money as a random county in Wyoming, which may have a hugely different cost of living factor that's in play. And that equity or inequity, how you want to determine that, is a huge factor. And so for us, what we do recognize is for that long-term housing assistance that's being needed over that 90-day period of time, the amount of money that they're receiving from the federal government is truly insufficient. The identifying piece that we want to bring back from our assessment is realistically, once those individuals apply for public assistance benefits, there are housing programs which we can place individuals into. So that's where a key component for us we identified in bridging the supportive services is making sure that those applications are being submitted as early as possible to bring them into our housing programs and be able to provide them with that level of assistance. We've been very fortunate over this past year the state is actually giving us a directive on putting more money towards housing and supportive housing supportive services. And so we're working to go ahead and make sure we're meeting those needs as issued by the state. The state recognizes this is a huge problem. It's just the federal government I think that we all agree is giving an insufficient amount of funds to support the program. I appreciate that clarification and I know having served on the PAL committee that we were trying to advocate for legislation through our local senators Padilla and Butler to To actually help them understand that cost of housing in the Bay Area and Alameda County is not the same as in Wyoming or something But I guess we are not successful the way we're going to be going to be going to be going to be going to be going to be going to be going to be going to be going to be going to be going to be going to be going to be going to be going to be going to be going to be going to be going to be going to be going to be going to be going to be going to be going to be going to be going to be going to be going to be going weren't selected for funding. And the recommendation from our federal lobbyists is that we start working with their offices locally before the federal, before the proposal was submitted federally to work with the local offices first. To work with the local senators office? Yes. OK. When they last presented that in February, we were supposed to meet with federal lobbyists like that within a week or two. So we did get that proposal to them at that time and what Shane presented was the outcome. And we were told just to work with the local offices first to make them aware of the situation. Okay, so I guess it was a, well, you would think it's a national issue so it's more than just working with our local office, right? Yeah, if you're comparing allocations for housing between states But okay, well try again. I I think to add to what Andre had stated is, I think they really want us to continue to just be strong advocates using the resources we have and hoping that the advocacy that we provide at the local level to those contacts that we have, that they'll try to continue to go ahead and uplift that at that next level and hopefully catch more traction in the future presentation. I mean, I think that something as large as this shouldn't need to have huge advocacy, but yet we know there's many programs and services that need support, and that's part of what we have to do at times. If I may add something to that, our partner resettlement agencies were asking the main points were one for the housing cost, second for the employment services, and then the third for transportation. The housing part which they are responsible for is for the beginning, for the reception and placement part. And that budget is totally that contract is with the State Department. It has nothing to do with the Social Services Agency. Employment services for all those clients which are housed in Alameda County, based on their zip codes are provided by our contracted service providers. So one of the agencies which was placing clients in Alameda County, they requested the employment services support, but that's part of our services which we are providing through our partner agencies. So there will be a duplication and we cannot spend money on clients which are residing in other countries. So we have responsibility for here. comes to the housing support, we had several different fundings available to housing support for newcomers. We had Ukrainian housing and utility services fundings that's sufficient enough to cover. Of course, they have limitations. It's covering only for up to six months. And there is a cap of 10,000 spending per family. But that's taking care of the Ukrainian newcomers. At the main time, have the ACIP program, the Afghan Investment Support Program, and the state renewed that it's contracted with one of the agencies located in southern California, but will be covering housing costs of Afghan newcomers. And for the first time with the new allocations which we have for the federal fiscal year 2425, they are allowing also housing support for in addition to other supportive services we have for any newcomers in need. So that will be additional funding available to us for the next. Anyone, thank you for the information. So with the recommendations, are you asking anything from the committee today? Do you want to or are you just like me to take it? Okay. So at the last board meeting that we were present at there was the ask that was identified and there was an amount of money that was was established and said we could kind of work towards that, but then there was the further ask to conduct the assessment. I think in the assessment process, we clearly have established in our review that what was identified is accurate. There is a need. We see that need as maybe being a slightly different need. It's very much an alignment, but it's a different scope than maybe what was originally provided in that. The major, as Ramona has just stated, as I've stated in the presentation, employment services, we believe, is being conducted and handled here and alimed a county well. The employment services piece we think could be removed from that ask. And we think that ultimately this comes down to housing and transportation. Housing and transportation, as we've identified though, are available and anyone that applies for public assistance benefits is eligible for both of those there. So the gap it may even be a little smaller than that in terms of the fact that we're looking at the individuals that are not yet on public assistance benefits, not yet eligible for those housing and transportation services, and potentially we're seeing there are so many agencies exhausting those funds that they have and their program to support those individuals. That's really the window that we're at. And so I think for us, the recommendation that we identified is that it would be Alameda County's choice to consider the use of county general funds to procure a recurring annual contract that would require annual funding from the county general fund to support that. And the reason why it would have to be county general funds on that annual recurring contract is because the RSS funding that exists can't be applied to those individuals because they haven't yet applied for public assistance benefits. Do we have any indication how much money we're talking about? At the presentation in February, I think the community partners were asking for 2 million a year. And I think we have some of those community partners in the audience. And at the time, you identified measure W as a possible source. We're going to. So right now, even if we were to support that, we would still have to come up with the source. That's correct. Okay. Okay. Thanks. Thank you. Do we have any speakers? All right. OK. Thanks. Thank you. Do we have any speakers? Azita. Hello. good afternoon. My name is Azit Hausa. I'm new Director of Resatement for Jewish Family Services of Silicon Valley. And I would like to say that as was mentioned, we had or clients' arrivals, and 57 of them were originally housed in located in Alameda County. However, we have a lot of clients who arrive in Santa Clara County would rather to go to Alameda County. So we would like to be able to help them. And we would like to help them with transportation also, because all the resources that State Department gives us is just like 1,300 per person. And everybody knows how cost of living in Santa Clara County and in Alameda County, in the Bay Area. We could benefit from additional help to help them with transportation and housing in Alameda County. Brad Adams. the county. Yeah, that's it. Thank you. Brad Adams? Good afternoon. Thank you. My name is Brad Adams with the International Rescue Committee. You might know Jordan to a fee. I've replaced her as the director of our office. I first want to say I really appreciate our collaboration with the county, Shane Rahman, in particular, we work very closely on everything we do. So, we're really great for that collaboration. I really appreciate their analysis and I appreciate that they agree with our assessment of the need and funding gaps for newcomers. And unfortunately, as they pointed out, this is sort of a known gap created federally. The federal government knows they're giving us fewer resources and are required to the job that they have given to us and that's not just a shortcoming they intend for other private or public partnerships to supplement it. And so that's what we're looking for. And we know that we're state funding is being mobilized, federal pass, you find it being mobilized. In addition, other counties have found some additional funding at their disposal to supplement that. And so we were coming up with proposals for that. A couple small amendments, perhaps to the county's assessment. First of all, it is true that the county is providing funding for employment services, and they're very effective. We would suggest that the volume of that might not be adequate. So, we weren't suggesting our proposal to have some separate track of activities, but instead to reinforce those activities, which are effective and work well, but there's an unmet need there we believe, just in terms of the volume of those activities. And then in housing, absolutely housing is an extremely critical need. We are able to target it to recipients in the county, and we are able to reach both people who have not applied for assistance, and including those who have applied for public assistance. So if that's a condition, we can meet either of those as targeting. The crime is thank you. Robin. Good afternoon supervisors and our partners in the office at the county. I'm Robin Mentira. I'm CEO of Jewish Family and Community Services East Bay. And I'm glad to be back here with our partners to continue this conversation. When we came to visit you in February, our ask was for $2,301,404, which was an assessment of the number of people that we have welcomed into Alameda County since the U.S. military withdrawal from Afghanistan and the evacuation, and also since the war in Ukraine began. We do resettle folks from other areas of the world, who are refugees and in the Global Refugee Program, but these are the largest concentrations that we resettle here in Alameda County, because the focus of resettlement work, as I will remind you, is about family reunification. So wherever people come through to the United States, they find their way here either because they are originally resettled here with their connection in Elimita County, or because they were resettled somewhere else for whatever reason, and they make their way back to their families. So we serve both the people who the federal government brings to the county directly and those who find their way here indirectly. There are four areas where we had requested funding, three of which were discussed by our colleagues in the county housing employment and transportation. We also requested a minimal amount of funding to support our internal case management. Our great staff members, most of the time former refugees themselves who are on the ground every day in the field doing this resettlement work and the federal funding to pay for them is not adequate. We hope that we can find some continued path forward because although we do access the services directly through the county and those that come through those who have contracts with the county that Shane referenced we still see a gap between the services provided and the needs of our clients and we're hoping we can address that gap today. Thank you. I have no more speakers for this item. Okay, thank you. That's a very same to you. Have any thoughts on this? No thoughts? No comments? No, okay. Well, if we're looking for about $2 million, I think what we should do is, as the agency director, to talk with the county administrator and see if there are any options. Have you had that conversation? No, I haven't had the conversation with the County Administrator. I do know that some of the community partners have been in contact with supervisor Halberts office as well. I don't know what the outcome of those discussions have been. I also don't know based on what staff's recommendations are. If the 2.3 million is still what needed, it's still what is needed since you all identified. Some of those needs are being taken care of so I don't know if there needs to be a reassessment of the dollar amount that's being asked for based on what's been presented today. I haven't heard that. Is it still roughly $2 million or doesn't need to be reassessed? Okay. Could you could you do that? And maybe with the staff that can report back to the agency director in either weekend schedule an update in this committee after we know that. Because I think we need to understand but in the meantime we'll still ask the agency director to talk to the county administrator to see what our options are but let's try to get a sense of if it's 2 million or 1.8 or 1.5 what we're talking about is that okay? I think it's okay but also have another question and it may have come up when you all presented back in February But are the other counties contributing toward this issue as well? My need comes back in the mic. So at the start of the large relocation of Afghans to the east of Bay, we received over about a million dollars from county and to JFCS East Bay and in Santa Clara County I think there have been two rounds of funding from the county split between JFS Silicon Valley and IRC in San Jose. The first one I'm not going to get the numbers exactly right. The first one was just about under a million dollars and there was a second round of funding as well You happen to know how much that second round was No, we can certainly pull that information for you, but so far the neighboring counties have been offering funding since 2022 Okay, and that was my other question because it sounds like there's maybe one time or a couple of times what you're asking for from Alameda County is ongoing. Okay. All right. Thank you. So what I want to do then if it's okay to supervise a tab is I want to have an update at our next meeting in October? Yeah, in terms of this reconciliation, any conversations you have with the county administrator, so we can kind of get a sense of just where we are and what we might be able to do. Are you okay with that surprise to him? I'm fine with it. So this came to us in February. And then I know that during the budget hearings, we had directed the county administrator and social service to fund the gap that was in crisis for the shelters. Remember, I can't remember, was it? It's like 4 million or it was Some amount and it because they were on the verge of of closing and I wasn't sure During that assessment process whether this allocation was also considered It's part of our budgeting This allocation was not considered so it was 3.5 million that the healthcare agency reallocated to social services to administer that program. And though this ask was not a part of that directive. Okay, because my recollection was back in February when we were talking about this and we were trying to assess in particular the question that you had asked about what the other counties were putting in and it was a proportional and is it a contract that we have with with the Jewish family, the Greeny Services Group. And then I thought we were trying to incorporate that into our budget discussions, but I don't think that happened. It did not. So are we talking about the next budget cycle or are we talking about a mid budget cycle? Well, what is your thought, President Miley? Yeah, I like to wait, you know, get the reconciliation. Have the staff talk to Andrea, have Andrea talk to the county administrator and have them give us an update at our October meeting to determine what, you know, are we are we talking you know how much money are we talking how much money can we come up with in terms of a source of funding presently and if we do have to look for funding in the next fiscal year what we might be looking at but since it's kind of we didn't address it, when we adopted the budget, let's kind of get a sense of where we are at this point in time. Because yeah, I was, I mean, I was on a mission. And so that would be my thought. And maybe because once again, I'm just throwing out numbers. Maybe let's say it's $1.8 million, they can only come up with 800,000 at this point in time. We've got it, and we recommend another million. And we explore that for the next fiscal year. I'm just doing our stuff, which is meaningless at the moment without the information. What I'm trying to get handled on is the eminence you have the need, because the shelters are about to close close and we needed to find funding and then clearly when you made references to measure W, that's a funding that is still going through the court process and so when you mentioned that I was thinking that we were looking prospectively but if you're thinking we need to do something midterm, that's different. Yeah, that's what I'm thinking. And I'm not trying to suggest an amount just yet, nor source just yet. That's what we pay them to do in see what they come back with, recognizing that hopefully as a committee, we feel we need to something that we can do. I hope that we can do something that we can do. I hope that we can do something that we can do. I hope that we can do something that we can do. I hope that we can do something that we can do. I hope that we can do something that we can do. I hope that we can do something that we can do. I hope that we can do something that we can do. I hope that we can do something that we can do. talk to the county administrator because maybe there might be other funding in the county that goes outside of the agency That could be utilized to help meet this on a one-time basis or You know an ongoing basis. I don't know that once again. I don't want to second-guess at the moment I second guess at the moment. I think we should have this conversation at our work session tomorrow when we talk about the federal, the art of funding. If we're talking about one time because we were also getting requests about child care, the $10 million that they're asking for and then some of the leftover funding that were not used by some of the child care agencies and so we need to put some context into this request and the other request as well. Yeah. Are you planning to be there tomorrow at a work session? Yes, I will be there. All right. Well, there's any information between now and tomorrow that the agency director can ascertain that it will be helpful. I don't think what we do tomorrow is exclusive of this coming back in October, but I think let's do both. That's okay with you. Super budget. Yes. If I know between now and tomorrow He up update for tomorrow's work session. I'm sorry. I can almost guarantee I won't have an update for tomorrow's work session I mean it might be something you want to put on your peers radar, but I don't think I'll have the information by tomorrow But it would be good to put this on the radar of the other supervisors, especially supervisor Halbert, because he in particular has mentioned that there was a large Afghan refugee population in his district. And so I think he was amenable to looking at some resources and if he's aware about this in the context of the budget, I think it would be helpful to that discussion. I think so too and I think you just raised another valid point. We need to find out if any board members have contributed to any other community partners because I know there are different art buffans that have gone to different CBOs and that could have possibly happened as well. All right so as I understand it we're going to at least raise this tomorrow under either board initiatives or ARPA update or something to that effect but we're going to come back and have an update at this committee. I think that meeting is October 28th or 28th. Okay. So we're going to agenda as this part of the update on October 28th. And hopefully we can have whether or not what amount we're talking about and what we can do either one time ongoing presently in the future than if we have to look at it for the next fiscal year as well. Okay. Alrighty. Thanks. That's where we are at the moment. But do we have any I don't think we have any other speakers on this right? Okay. So I think we've concluded today. Do we have any public speakers on non-agenda items? I have no speakers for public comment. All right. Okay. So, so-so-so-services committee for September 23rd's adjourned. Thank you.