>> thank you everyone and welcome back to the second-half of our meeting; which is going to be exciting. welcome back, council members. we are pleased to have five

presentations on this next half. we're going to ask if you would keep your public comment until after the presentations are done. and then we will take public comment from the council first and then the staff and then the public. this month is mental health awareness month, and we are so glad to have so many different presenters this month. and it is a pleasure to have language matters, resources, mental health veterans and on and on. so you guys, today to start it off, we have language matters, doing the presentation today is terri byrne the solve program coordinator and gillian croen, advocate for mental health association of san francisco. please come to the mic. mike are you first?

you spoke? i am so sorry. okay, you guys first we have up today mr. michael gause, resources and supportive services for hoarding and cluttering challenges. an overview of the services, supports and resources in san francisco for both individuals with hoarding and cluttering challenges, stakeholders, advocates, providing services, presentation today by michael gause, deputy director mental health association of san francisco. please welcome to the mic mr. michael. >> thank you, council members and thank you idell. madame chair, in particular who has done an amazing amount of work for almost five years now and probably longer as part of many of our efforts. thank you. we have a couple of tag team

efforts from mhasf today because i have to take off a little early. i am going to give a quick 8-10-minute overview for hoarding and cluttering challenges and joining me is my colleague gillian, who will share some specificks about our peer-based services and i will time myself here. so as chair wilson said, as idell said i'm the deputy director with the mental health association of san francisco and very delighted to be back here today and thank you to joanna for inviting us back today. to start things off, you know, i think just as a point of reference, i have a wealth of materials, we can provide the council members and public afterwards. a quick background

on mha, we're a non-profit based in downtown san francisco. we do not provide direct clinical-based services. we are an affiliate of the national mental health association. we provide a lot more services based in education and advocacy, research, training and increasingly peer support services. so another thing to know about us, we are a consumer-run organization, a mental health consumer-run organization. so it really gives us a unique perspective on the work we do on behalf of folks in san francisco. to just talk briefly about our work with hoarding, i guess it's been about 15, 16 years, close to 16 years that mental health association of san francisco has worked on hoarding and cluttering challenges specifically i have

been here at four years and worked ten years ago on prop 63 when it was first put op the ballot. back then, it was a much smaller organization and it came about by a group of advocates and consumer advocates who identified hoarding and cluttering as a unique challenge to san francisco in particular and this was well-before the tv shows and before it had a lot of notoriety and brought out in some circumstances and it was a group of folks, advocates in our office, to deal with these challenges and we need a place to come and meet and talk about it and give each other peer support. that is really a testament to the amazing advocacy of people who have worked on this, who have directly experienced challenges with hoarding over the years. so we ran a support group for many years. we still run it on a weekly basis, drop-in, peer support group. and then we kind of branched into had a conference. so we have had the biggest conference on hoarding for the last 15 years, in the united states,

and quite possibly the world. we just had it back in may. one of our specialtis that we see yourselves doing is really bringing together advocates and people directly affected by hoarding and cluttering challenges and stakeholders such as researchers and clinicians and throughout the world, really acting as a hub of resources here in san francisco. so i would say that as far as specific resources that are offered around hoarding and cluttering challenges san francisco, we have, i think, through mha and our colleagues we have more to offer than other locations in the country. as an example, we have the conference that attracts around 400-500 each year and a weekly support group that anyone in san francisco can come to, if they are identify as someone

who has experienced challenges with hoarding and cluttering and i should back up, when they talk more about language and why that is so important, when we talk about mental health conditions. so we'll use the word "hoarding and cluttering" now, but there is quite a bit of thinking on our end and other national leaders how to change that, because "hoarding and cluttering" is not the nicest term and loaded with stigma itself and we would like to look at a different way to phrase that and maybe it's "collecting and acquiring." things like that. it's still known as "hoarding and cluttering" now and we have a task force we had for 7-8 years and i co-chair with the doctor from sfhs and we meet to identify what is needed? what

are the gaps in the system? right now, one of our hot-button issues is trying to find a centralized intake point for anybody who is experiencing hoarding and cluttering and needs services. that right now typical goes through the department of aging and human services and adult and protective services and other stakeholders, to identify, so if my case manager is working with me on that, what is the one place i could call to make it simpler? right now, i think that tends to be us and we can do our best to triage that out. but that is one focal area that we're working on and also working more closely with the department of building inspection and other city agencies around collaboration. in addition, to the task force, gillian is going to talk about the specific peer-based

services that we offer, but we really ramped up in last two years on looking at different approaches. so while we don't provide direct clinical services and by that i mean, one-on-one visit with a counselor or therapist or what not. we have really moved into the field of peer-based services and as gillan will talk about, we have a peer response team through the community behavioral service and that we have five peer responders who work as part of that, who have also experienced hoarding challenges themselves. and are in recovery and are supporting others in the community. so we have worked with over 50-60 people in the last two years. anybody can receive support from that. it's free. if to anybody in san francisco. there has been a huge demand for services, one-to-one peer-based support.

you call us, john, one of the coordinates or our other staff you want support, we'll meet you on-site, at the office and provide that one-on-one peer support and that has branched out into more groups and i will we'll talk more about a variety of peer-run support groups that are are valuable free of charge and those are 12-15 weeks in our offices. entirely run by peers, and a lot of different goal-setting and a lot of different structure in those meetings each week. the one other clinical group we offer is a resource to anybody in san francisco is the 16-week treatment group. now we don't run that group ourselves. as i said, we're not clinical -- we don't offer clinical resources per se, but we have different providers trained in cognitive behavioral therapy who utilize our office space and we host the group.

it's a more structured 16-week program. so that is another group that meets twice a year and we're just finishing up one now. the great things about some of the services that we offer, it's all free. no charge to anyone. and we're in the process of, knock on wood, searching for more resources to greatly expand what we are offering now into a couple of surrounding counties and that is through partnerships that we have with the university of california-san francisco. there are a variety of things outside of use and ucsf and it was traditionally classified within obsessive-compulsive disorder, led by dr. carol

matthews often as different resources as well and dr. matthews is one the leaders here in san francisco. monica works there as well. there is a variety of other professional organizers that we can link folks up with in the city and outside of the city, as well as cleaning services, when needed. adult protective services obviously for situations when there are more urgent issues or an immediate danger to self. we have very close linkages with them and it's always a good idea for folks to call us too, rather than jumping to a report on something like that. because a lot of times that can be avoided, in many cases. i am about a minute away from my time. so let me see what i can throw in and invite gillian up. i am going lead some business cards as well today and we have got tons of printed resources and powerpoints and stuff to send out to folks.

i would love to have council members contact me or other members of our team or send materials through joanna, but there is a lot of materials available for folks facing that challenge. >> make sure someone talks about the awards. >> oh, the awards ceremony? >> yes, please. >> i think jules and terri can. welcome to verian, who has done an amazing amount of work in just nine months? four months. [ laughter ] >> i should know that. verian has been a tremendous asset to mha and has done amazing work as far as our peer response team over the past four months. it feels like a year.

welcome verian. >> welcome. >> i am verian pierce, and i am a peer responder and i started as a member of the action group, which one is of the support groups we have available at mha, and i came to a point in my life i just needed to deal with this issue. and a friend -- i told a friend, i am a hoarder. i had this realization and he told me about the action group, and mha and i went and it was -- these are people i can speak to about this shameful behavior. there is so much shame and stigma around this behavior and coming to the support group or talking to john or having a peer responder come to your home, it's the first time in many, many years that most people have allowed someone to cross their front door, because there is so much terror, if

you see how i live, you will think i am a terrible person. so we just live in isolation. it's a very isolating disorder. so i started the support group or i joined the support group as a participant and then one evening, john franklin, our team leader came in and said there was a peer responder position open and i just thought that is for me. so i got it and here i am and it seems like it was just the right fit and it seems like i have been here for a long time. but we do -- the peer responders, we do one-on-one home visits. that is one of the primary things that we do is we go to people's homes. we kind of give them an assessment; they know it's a peer, someone who also lives with these challenges. so we're a safe person to let into their home, who isn't going to judge them.

we can assess the situation, help them strategize where would they like to start? where would they like to go? how do they see their life happening? and give them tools that we have to deal with the clutter, and we tend to -- we're available on a weekly basic. we like to encourage them to become self-sufficient at some point. but there are varying levels of clutter. so some people need more help than others. and we also offer the treasurer's class, which works with the structure group that goes through the book, and the exercises in the book. and another one called "the treatment group." it's

amazingly helpful to gain insight into the thinking patterns that get us stuck in the behaviors and underlying beliefs. the action group is for people who are ready to take action, you know? one is for insight and understanding. the other is for actually ready to deal with the clutter and we're coming up with new ideas for new groups like support groups for family and friends of hoarders. for youth, you know, children who demonstrate a tendency towardss this behavior can be taught early on. it comes to a point it's unlivable and by that time in your life, you are have had

time to accumulate stuff and you are not as mobile as you were in your 20s and 30s and you have more stuff. so it's really rewarding for me just to go and give people hope. this is something that is new to them. it was new to me. that there is actually a recovery, actually recovery is possible with this. and actually the first big event that made me realize i wanted to be part of mha was the awards ceremony and i saw all of that love and how many people were coming together to celebrate people in recovery from mental health challenges. so that was a really wonderful experience and brought me into the whole world that i am in now and loving it. so i am not sure if you wanted me to finish? thank you very much. >>