and we put out an alert, an email alert which goes to all of our workers. we get calls. we assign the case to someone and within 20 minutes, we have two volunteers there. they don't go in alone. they go side by side. they care for our community members. my definition of community is we. if we are not there in these most important hours of a person's life, we're not a community and so for those that have this special need, i'm very grateful that i can respond. thank you for all of your help. >> good ann, supervisors, thank you very much for having us here. in the interest of time of other volunteers speaking, i just want to say on behalf of the san francisco crisis care advisory team of which i'm the chair of and i have had the privilege of being the chair for i think almost three years now, i just wanted to let you know that this organization,

david came to san francisco over four years ago to form this. so we're really as a crux and a watershed, but it's had a long history already in the city of building a focus. it's been my honor and privilege to work with the advisory team, a dedicated teams of individuals that took the message and mission of what we're trying to do to heart and have worked very hard. we have lived through the hiring of christoph and working with krisoff which has just been a great gift to the organization, seeing two volunteer graduations at this point. i just want to emphasize that this is really an organization that is going through a process that is establishing itself in a really thoughtful logical way collaboratively. as i representative from kaiser permitty, we're privileged to be a part of it. i wanted to tell you, thank you very much. >> good afternoon, supervisors. my name is jile, i'm a

volunteer for san francisco crisis care. i respond to one of the calls and i went to see a woman in her early 30's who had just lost her baby. she went to sleep and she woke up and saw that the baby was dead. she called the paramedics and the paramedics were unable to revive the baby. i want each of you to imagine just for a moment what it would be like this problem for you. this mother was destroyed. her husband was not with her. he was in jail. he was unable to help her.

we were able to inform the jail and to contact the father so the father could talk with the mother and talk about the baby. things could be worse if someone didn't call us to help this woman. thank you very much. thank you. >> good afternoon. my name is christina johnson and my son was murdered in the hayes valley apartment complex in 2011. i unfortunately had the opportunity to see my son murdered, laid out there murdered and i actually didn't

get any kind of response for me and consolianses for my family, my other three children at this time that this happened. he was laid out for a couple of hours and i did not know it was him. it is really important in my experience that we get some kind of response help. i had to deal with funeral arrangements with the medical examiner's office. i didn't even get a chance to see my son until the day of his wake because of the trauma that he sustained because of the injuries that were given to him. he was shot in the head. that was very trauma advertising. i went to the medical examiner's office. i spoke with them.

they turned me away. i broke down and cried. i couldn't call anybody. i didn't have anybody to talk to deal with this. for the families, it's really important us to have some kind of help in that manner. i have three other children, one is 18, he is a boy, and then i also have a grandchild that my son was left with, that i got left with with my son. that's a bittersweet pill. i just would like for more to be done for the families that have lost someone because it is very needed very badly. thank you for listening. supervisor olague: thank you. >> good ann, supervisors. i carrie my employee everywhere i go. my son albert was shot and killed in a drive-by shooting on january 7, 2007. it's still an unsolved murder case. why i'm here today is to

support your programs that you want to put into effect for more funding or whatever it is to help survivors of homicides or any other crimes victims, period. i know for a fact that this pain never goes away. it's been five years and thank god. i have met the people that i have met to go through this time, but i still do have two other boys who still suffer to this day. for the loss of their brother. even though i can try and tell them to seek services, i can't force them to do anything, so i think it's just a matter of time and their healing process before they are going to take the step that they need to take to get better. what i'm hearing today is good.

the services that you have in place with all of these other o when my son was killed. we didn't have all that and the money was there. help was $7,500 at that time and i heard that you have reduced it. my son's funeral cost $17,000 so that was a big help. the day of the actual killing, i had nobody there at the hospital. it was all chaos at the hospital. my kids and their friends were punching walls and kicking, just lost control completely because of the death of their brother. i really hope that you can put more of these programs from point one from when the homicide happens so that these other children don't have to

suffer like mine did and not getting that immediate help from the hospital. supervisor olague: thank you. >> thank you. >> good afternoon. i'm dr. marion jones, the chief executive offer of west side community services and i'm here to talk about why i believe that we need an expansion of our current system to meet, they are going to be in this system or any other system. just listening to the last two two women speak and my experience in the community, there are no words to describe what happens when a mother buries a child. when a child loses a mother, they're an orphan. when a spouse loses a partner, they're a widow. there are not words to describe what happens when a mother loses a child.

and i think this is important because it speaks to our need to have a greater system of care, a larger system of care, not only clinicians, but people in the community, survivors and the community also including spiritual support, but it is my hope that we can come together and we can support programs likes crisis care and other programs in the community with support from the services where we receive the bulk of our funding so that we're not jumping over each other and we can really have a coordinated response, any response that meet the long-term needs. i also know that in many of the cases where you have a sudden infant death syndrome or you have the loss of a spouse after many years, we just don't have services in place and i think

that a model that needs compassion care, refer people to clinical care is really the missing piece to all of this, thank you. >> thank you. good afternoon. my name is tony and i'm a san francisco crisis care supporter. i was introduced to krisoff a little over a year ago. i am a 20-year veteran of the police department department in sonoma county. we never had services like this, specifically with san francisco crisis care. i'm familiar with the other agencies in the city and they're awesome. as a police officer going to a scene, to have someone else there, to help with the victims, to help with the families, to help give them information that we -- our job as a police officer is to handle the investigation and go catch the bad guy.

what i see in the passion and commitment of the crisis care volunteers they have met, i have helped them with some training, they are all about helping at the house to alleviate the police officer, firefighters, and everybody else of having to deal with what i think sometimes is a stronger emotional connection with the victim than we can ever provide. so for them, crisis care is really a pivotal part of what the victim needs. when i was a police officer, we didn't have that assistance and we were having to help the victims figure out all of their stuff, go catch the bad guys, do the other things, go to the other calls. it was just something we missed. now i think with a system that could be in place with san francisco crisis care and everything else that you guys have, it's a pivotal piece that

will really, victims won't be left alone and will be able to get help that they need. thank you. supervisor olague: thank you. >> good afternoon, my name is marie boards and i'm a san francisco business owner. i have had the opportunity to work with krisoff and his volunteers and what i want to say about it is that they already know how to leverage the resources that they have because we have had the good fortunate of assisting with putting together the resource guide for the volunteers on the ground and through that research and the time that i spent and that our team has spent putting that together, we have been able to determine that san francisco crisis care and u.s. crisis care is efficient, it's effective, it is sustainable. it's been around a long time in

other communities, much bigger than ours, but it's something that absolutely belongs here and the infusion of funds to help make that happen, the emergency seed money would be of great buff to this community. it helps to bridge these victims and families of victims to the services to the essential services that have been described today. thank you. supervisor olague: thank you. >> my name is lee, i'm a consultant for west c.r.n. a couple things, thank you for this hearing. it's very important. if you can please get us the community, especially c.r.n. a copy of this tape because i think it's a good learning piece for us to have to show people in the community and people in the schools.

i believe if we can get a couple copies of that, these organizations would really help us. i don't know if it costs a lot. i'm sure you know someone who can do that. supervisor elsbernd: it's all online, free. >> i'll get somebody to do that. imaginey, the young woman, the mother who lost so many children, basically, i'm glad public health is here because it seals like there is a lot of services she goes to and tries to get, but there is nothing advocating or case managing in those services. so i would recommend that someone from public health coordinate all of those services and be her advocate so they can do case management services and pull owl of those people together. she has gone all over the place

for help. people have been in and out of her life. there is not one person or agency to make them responsible to help her. thank you. supervisor olague: thank you. is there any additional public comment? seeing none, public comment is closed. i know that there are other meetings that both of us have to be probably about 45 minutes ago, but that's fine because this meeting was totally worth it. this discussion i think is very important and i have a quick question, even though i shouldn't take up more time, but i do have a question of the c.r.n. and dr. jones and one thing i was wondering is, one thing that was raised a lot was the issue of stigma. do you have any thoughts on how we might overcome that in some communities? i think that it's more prevalent perhaps in

communities of color, but i think that in general, it's still a source of stigma in many communities. i wonder if you have any thoughts of how to overcome those things? >> i think it's something that we're going to always address. one way that we have become to overcome it is offering more services in the community so people don't feel like they're coming to a mental health center to get their services. i think that now because of what, different storylines in the media and people like oprah, people getting therapy is looked at as you don't have a character deficit, but something that really can happen. i think that having a range of services and bringing the community in and asking them what they want rather than us trying to make a decision and say you're 2k7ped and you need

this, if we ask them what they want, then i think that we have a better chance of meeting them and probably less stigma. they're not trying to figure out what our labels mean. >> how do you achieve that? do you go out to the community, based on what people say when they come to you or how do you -- >> we go out to the community and we have different types of events. we do a lot of outreach where we bring food. i have a women's drumming group that comes to my house every thursday night and people from the community come in. some just want to sit there, the drumming for them is very healing. so i think that we can't overlook any avenue. sometimes i host a luncheon and ask people to come in. i think that the more education people have, the better able they are to utilize the services and my goal has been to ensure that they have a full

buffet of services, but also to let them know what those services look like so that everyone may not need psycho therapy, but could benefit from having emotional support or care for a child who may have witnessed something. for many people, i know that when i was 17, my best friend was shot and killed and in my household, we were just taught don't think about it, just keeping moving on. we know that it doesn't really work. we have to have healthy ways for people that don't feel stigmatized. it's our burden to destigmatize mental health by offering it in ways that better meets the community needs. we're doing a book club at marcus books so that people can read about grief and recovery. this way it brings it to them in a way that i think is more like tv and also it just feels

good for them to be in more of an empowered role more than being the person that is always identified as the client or the victim. supervisor olague: thank you. >> i just want to add a couple things. one of the things that we are doing in multiple neighborhoods is pulling together a network of providers that are doing work in the community, pull them together on a neighborhood level to actually coordinate their services. we have this group of kids. we know they have been impacted by violence, how do we remove the stigma. how do we get them into the services? one of the part of the western addition in pulling together some of those providers and so in terms of strategies and tangible things that we do, right, our outreach workers have a very strong connection to the community.

they know a lot of the individuals that have been impacted by violence. she already spoke of complex trauma. they know the individuals that have experienced trauma and seen it their whole life. these are the individuals that we're able to connect with on a daily basis. to be able to do more interviews and meet them on the ground level or the street level and have these real discussions. you don't want to address the things that are going on with your life, but you're standing out here smoking weed every day, what does it mean for yourself? have the young people reflect on their own lives and where they are in the world to see the steps they need to take to achieve some other goals. big barrier is mental health and behavioral services in dealing with the trauma and the expos you're to trauma they have had their whole life. i mention this because one of the things that we have been able to do successfully is use unstructured activities such as outings, field trips, community events, bark confuse, things that she had mentioned and to

be able to have the actual clinicians involved in that and do outreach. what we are able to do is establish relationship and trust within the youth and the youngsters that we're trying to serve without everyone having a jacket i'm a clinician or a case worker. no, we are in this together. when they go on a snow trip or a camping trip with a mix of outreach workers, case managers and clinicians, the youth at the time don't know who is who. they see staff from multiple agencys that are doing an outing. what ends up having is we're able to build relationships and trust through those outings. when we're making those referrals and we're going to take you to the west side and we're going to take you to meet a clinician, some of the first questions are who is that and what is that? one of the biggest strengths that we're able to do in connecting them to services, yeah, that guy here that was on

the camping trip with us. oh, yeah, they're really cool. that's the actual clinician. oh, really? yeah. having those access to services, easy access to services at the neighborhood base level has really been one of the keys to getting youngsters and families into behavioral health services that address that overexposure to trauma. i want to highlight that. on a neighborhood-based level, folks are coming together and really putting their minds together in terms of saying how can we get these individuals that are most impacted by violence into those services. i wanted to give examples. those are the outside of the box activities that we do to link them to those services without them knowing that it is happening at the time. it's not until afterwards that we have them reflect and going through the steps and doing the formal linkage that they figure out and say, hold on, that was the part of the strategy. community bark confuse and events, i got a chance to develop rapport with this individual not knowing you were

setting me up to get into this service the whole time, right? we give a little nod and link. supervisor olague: it's too late. thank you. >> it's an going struggle. you talk about stigma and communities of color and the communities that are impacted most by violence, it is one of the hardest things to do. because of our relationship and our tight knit relationship with d.p.h. and their clinicians and those who provide the community-based mental health services, we get those. that is one of the biggest ongoing challenges in the work that we do. supervisor olague: thank you for your work. so i would like to, again, continue this to the call of the chair and thank everyone for coming out. thank you for the work that you do in this area. supervisor elsbernd: thank you supervisors olague and thank you for coming out. mr. clerk, that will be the order. we will continue this item to the call of the chair. are there any other items in front of the committee? >> no more items. supervisor elsbernd: seeing none, this meeting is adjourned.

>> this lodge is home to some of the best fly casting pools in the world. these shallow concrete pools don't have fish. this is just a place where people come to practice their fly casting technique. ith was built in the 1930's and ever since, people have been coming here to get back to nature. every year, the world championship of fly casting is held in san francisco and visitors from all over the globe travel to be here. >> we are here with phil, general manage of san francisco

rec and parks department at the anglers lodge. what do you think about this? >> it is spectacular, travis from oregon, taught me a snake roll and a space cast. >> there are people from all over the world come to san francisco and say this is the place to be. >> yeah. it's amazing, we have teams from all over the world here today and they are thrilled. >> i flew from ireland to be here. and been practicing since for the competition. all the best casters in the world come here. my fellow countryman came in first place and james is on the current team and he is the head man. >> it's unique. will not see anything like it where you go to compete in the world. competitions in ireland, scotland, norway, japan, russia

each year, the facilities here in the park are second to none. there is no complex in the world that can touch it. >> i'm here with bob, and he has kindly agreed to tell me everything i need to know about casting. i'm going to suit up and next, we're in the water. >> what any gentleman should do. golden gate angling has free lessons the second saturday of every month. we have equipment show up on the 9:30 on the second saturday of every month and we'll teach them to fly cast. >> ok. we are in the water. >> let me acquaint you with the fly rod. >> nice to meet you. >> this is the lower grip and the upper grip. this is a reel and a fly line. we are going to use the flex of

this rod to fling away. exactly as you moved your hands. >> that's it? >> that's it. >> i'm a natural. >> push both arms forward and snap the lower hand into your tummy. push forward. >> i did gave it a try and had great time but i might need some more practice. i met someone else with real fly casting skills. her name is donna and she is an international fly casting champion. >> i have competed in the casting ponds in golden gate park in san francisco. i have been to japan and norway for fly casting competition. i spend my weekends here at the club and at the casting pond. it's a great place to learn and have fun. on a season day like this, it was the perfect spot to be.

i find fly casting very relaxing and also at the same time very challenging sport. takes me out into the nature. almost like drawing art in the air. and then i can make these beautiful loops out there. >> even though people from across the globe come here to compete, it's still a place where locals in the know relax and enjoy some rely unique scenery. until next time, get out and play!