world. one of the highlights is a series of three left tapestries. they are on view after being in storage for 20 years. these tapestries representing various gardens. from his years of living in san francisco. hydrangeas, chrysanthemums, and whilst dahlias in rich, deep shades as they make their way to the baggage area. they can access behind-the- scenes information and interviews with the artist through an audio to work. it features archival audio as well as interviews with living artists. he can be accessed on site by dialing the telephone numbers located near the artwork or by

visiting the commission's web site. the public art speaks volumes of san francisco as a world-class city with world-class art and culture. for more information, visit >> good morning, everyone and welcome to the thursday, june 6, 2013, meeting of the board of supervisors and neighborhood services and safety committee, my name is david camp os and i am the chair and we joined by norman yee and supervisor eric mar is excused the clerk of the board is derek evans and before we turn it over to the clerk, i also want to acknowledge the following members of stgtv

staff, jessy larson, and jennifer low. >> could we have a motion to excuse supervisor mar? >> could we take that without objection. and mr. clerk if you have any announcements. >> make sure that you silent all cell phones and devices and complete the speaker cards and the file should be submitted to the clerk, items acted upon today will appear in the agenda unless always stated. >> i want to acknowledge john gibner who is helping to cover the meeting today with that mr. clerk, if you call item number one. >> it is a hearing regarding various city departments efforts to implement, the lease

bean gay, and transgender chapter 12 n. >> we have been joined today at the committee by supervisor john avalos who is the main sponsor of this item that is co-sponsored by supervisor weiner and myself and i want to thank supervisor avalos for his leadership, for asking this hearing, welcome to the committee and supervisor the floor is yours. >> thank you, chair campos and i want to thank you for quour co-sponsor ship along with supervisor scott weiner, this is a hearing to review what the city is doing to provide sensitivity training for the city employees and contractors who interact with lesbian, lgbtqq. this goes back to the 90s when the youth commission and the human rights commission have

hearing in response to committee stories about the youth who access the health services in the city experiencing discrimination, and even some cases violence. and these hearings led to the adoption of the chapter 12 m of the code requiring the sensitivity training for youth serving the city departments and employees and contractors, however, chapter 12 n, does not specify for maintaining compliance with training requirement and enforce naturally there is little effort to implement these trainings. and there are a number of indicators of the out needing need for competence and compassionate services for the youth. perhaps the most sobering is the data from the school district on the increase risk of suicide among the lgbtq students, 35.5 percent of less

beans bisexual and 49 percent of transgender youth have attempted suicide compared to six percent of the non-transyouth, they are also disproportionately lacking family support and homeless and transition housed or live in the foster care situations. although the attitudes of individual staff attitudes have undoubtly changed since the 90s we still have a long way to go in protecting the health and well-being of our youth and insuring them equal access, to city services. a clear example of this outstanding need is the fact that most city services do not track information about sexual orientation and gender identity through intakes, meaning that we are assessing the out comes of the youth experience when seeking services from the city. the purpose of this hearing is

not meant to chide anyone, the intent of this hearing is to it review the progress that we were starting to make on implementing this train and to explore what else we can do as a city to better service lgbtq youth. what are the challenges to implementing these trainings. >> such as the content of the intake forms and appropriate bathroom facility and the capacity to make appropriate referals based on the issues faced by the youth. i would like to thank all of the city staff who are here to the dedication for the issue and taking time to show your efforts with us today. >> and in particular i would like to thank youth commissioner leah toomuch for the dedication to this issue as well as the commissioner, director, and coordinator adele

carpenter. and so i have a list of speakers who will be presenting and the first one up will be commissioner mia toomuch from the san francisco youth commission followed by david ray from the human rights commission and then michael baxter from the department of public health and noel from the human services agency and also have with us chief, bill siferman who will also be taking a presentation as well. >> commissioners toomuch, thank you for being here and always your great advocacy around this issue, you have been the one for bringing this forward to the attention of the board of supervisors and the youth commission, of course and the city departments, welcome. >> thank you, so much. supervisor avalos and other supervisors and officials here today. again, my mia toomuch and i am a youth commissioner.

today, we will be talking about out a little bit who the youth commission is. so the youth commission is responsible for identifying the unmet needs and concerns of san franciscans and children and youth. we are invested because we recommend that queer and transyouth see disproportionate amounts of discrimination and we were instrumental in creating it as an ordinance which was early in the youth commission's history. and we see the ordinance as an outstanding need for addressing the needs of lgbtq youth and city services and especially as a youth to migrated to this

city i am invested because i recognize that i had to receive city services to have my basic needs met for a number of years. and as a person who has experienced homelessness, violence and unemployment and employment discrimination, like many of my peers, i see that the crucial need for having supportive service providers there, filling the void when family members and those on the community don't. our housing issue s commitingty has renewed focus on 12 n since i have been on the commission in the last two years. but we need leadership from the see to insure that our needs are being met. so, the youth commission, 2011, 12, and 12, 13, budget and

policy priorities. and we wanted to expand the implementation to attract the lgbtq, youth and services by insuring that the department and seeking efforts to identify the needs of lgbtq youth. >> it has included in participating in a working group with dph, and the human rights commission which we will hear about later and we have also been involved in supporting the development of the first 12 n training program and so this was piloted at the clinic and we will hear more about that later. but i organized and facilitated youth focus grups to get more

information on why this issue is so important to the lgbtq youth. and we also gave input on the content of the video and how to make the training as fast as possible. and the youth to participate in the video and to share their stories and to share how they would like to be treated when accessing city service and also participated in the pilot screenings and work sight feedback settings. so this resulted in the completing of the first pilot training and you can see there some of the youth who were in the video as well as one of the mothers. and continuing this conversation we worked to raise awareness on the issue by launching a social media campaign on tum ler, so you can find us at youth matters at tumbler.com and some of the

stories that we have heard from this are the needs of implementing 12 n because to the next slide. when you side that i need 12 n because i am here to talk about my job not my gender, frequently when lgbtq youth going to access food stamps and services they have to educate the service provider on hey, this is my name and hey this is my pronoun and can you not be rude to me instead of working on what they really need to work on which is getting a job and getting in school and working on on priorities in their life not their identity. >> so, these commission has a couple of certains regarding various implementation of the video. and first and foremost would be an unfunded mandate meaning that there is not additional funds ear marked for implementing the video. and even though we have an

additional burden on the city departments and contractors. so, we see that as not helping as an implementing 12 n and so we would like to see strategyizing around how to fund this mastiff training program. >> so we often need clarification on understanding what the city departments are implicated and identifying which staff to prioritize for the training because if we are talking about all service providers, all workers whose work directly impacts the youth, that is thousands of service providers. and city employees. so, we would also like to get clarity on who is responsible for overseeing compliance because right now, the code knows that the human rights

commission are supposed to approve a list of trainers. we don't find it a sufficient solution to the capacity needs of the city departments because there is not training program that is going to meet all of the needs of city departments. there needs to be a centralized process. and dedicated support for the city departments to make this happen. >> is that within each department? or one over sees every department is part of it? >> we recommend that each department has individual needs but that their needs to be a centralized compliance effort and so maybe having like an rsp process for the whole city, but then, having individualized training programs per department or if there is an rfp process for each department that would be a little bit more

but i think what we would like to focus on is making sure that someone is named for checking the compliance, because if someone was responsible for insuring compliance it has not worked because of 13 years. and only dph has been working to implement which is awesome that they are working but we would like to see more city departments on board. >> thank you. >> so the youth commission priorities for implementation include expanding the youth staff trainings to address the barriers, and to receive quality services for all lgbtq youth. we also would like to push for ininclusive intake forms because we recognize that many city departments and contractors may not know that they are serving lgbtq youth so they did he want know how many youth they are serving much

less being able to properly serve lgbtq youth. and so we see having ininclusive intake forms that track sickal orientation and gender identity as a great first step in identifying the needs of lgbtq youth. we would also like to see the leadership and departments to work ongoing best practices because we know that creating the safe cpos for the lgbtq is not just about staff training and adjusting institutional and behavior homophobia but addressing other administrative barriers and work site issue and how do we make our bathrooms safe and accessible. and also, shelter facilities, a

lot of lgbtq youth who access the youth shelters continue to have complaints around harassment, discrimination, and not feeling safe. we would also like to see expanded capacity building to make appropriate referals based on specific issues faced by lgbtq youth because we know that some people might not have the resources available to them to refer a transclient to a clinic to receive hormone treatment or other issues such as that. >> so, our focus for today are the city departments about existing training and the model programs for everything with the lgbtq youth and what their ongoing efforts have been to serve the lgbtq youth. so, we see this as a great first step in conversation with the departments and we want to

hear the challenges that the departments have faced in implementing 12 n. and with that, we would like to continue assessing what kind of training and leadership will support implementation of best practices for serving lgbtq youth. so, we would like to continue this conversation with the city departments on how to best implement 12 n to its full extent. >> we would like to thank all of the members of the committee and all of the city staffers and departments who are here today for this important issue thank you. >> thank you. >> thank you very much. colleagues any questions of youth commissioner? >> okay. let's go into the next presenter.. >> david moray. good morning, i'm david with

the sum man rights commission where i am an analyst and also in communications. i would like to first extend my sincerist appreciation to you supervisor avalos and this committee for leading this call for action on behave of city leadership to once again foster city wide awareness and enforcement of the 12 ordinance that mandates the training and cultural competency. and i have been asked to give a breathe back growth as to how it comes before the committee for your consideration. i would refer to my colleagues with the youth commission and the department of public youth to provide the overview and speak to the status at 12 n ordinance. >> however, i will echo a little bit of the history. in may, 1998, the city and county of san francisco created the lesbian, gay, bisexual transgender queer and questioning yoegt task force to recommend the board of supervisors the adoption of legislation to insure the full

implementation of the 1996 recommendations from the san francisco human rights commission regarding the needs of lgbtq youth in san francisco. this proposed legislation was to address the needs for sensitivity training and cultural competency for all of the departments and for the city departments and their contracted agencies who are receiving pardon me, $50,000 or more for city-funded administration for youth services. the training would address at a minimum, lgbtq youth with disabilities, lgbtq youth with hiv, immigrant lgbtq youth, and lgbtq of color, sexually abused lgbtq youth, run away and homeless lgbtq youth and lgbtq for non-accepting households although this was enacted 14 years ago unfortunately a significant amount of time has passed without action on this item until late 2010, and when the critical issues effecting

the lgbtq youth community begin to have a greater prominence on a national stage as we saw an increase on the incidents of the lgbtq suicide and bullying. as part of an hrc advocacy for the communities and other marginalized communities, they began to sphere head the revitalization to this issue to foster enforcement by working in conjunction with the youth commission to identify efficient ways to provide the impact and departments with the resources needed for greater enforcement of 12 n, and the culture sensitive to the cultural come penalty training. >> as one can imagine, funding was at issue and it was to you know, for the strategy development of the training. we were able to identify the department of public health had already in place a similar training protocol upon which we could perhaps build upon and

design the training module. they began to meet regularly to determine and develop a training module and seeking out and we were in contact with an agency. helping us move forward with this application related awareness and training. that organization suffered its own funding issues and had to pull out, and that presented a challenge, however, thanks to dph's stewart ship, we were able to identify the source within the dph and able to us to work, and which is the bay view center for arts and technology to produce a

training video of which commissioner toomuch has referenced in which we are excited with the end results. i think that it is important to know that once again san francisco was the only city in the nation with this type of ordinance to record. and the human rights commission is committed to the practices in following the legacy of insuring that all communities in san francisco diverse mosaic is treated with the same amount of dignity and respect of all other communities. we are hoping and very appreciative of the committee and with supervisor avalos leading the charge to help us further proceed on the 12 n because this is an extremely important that effects the lgbtq youth. and of course, speaking to that, not only will we be able to aid the youth community in improving their quality of life but also the quality of life for the whole lgbtq community

in san francisco. with that i certainly welcome to answer whatever questions you may have of me at this time. >> thank you, for your presentation and thank you for your work and for how we can actually have models to implement from and here in san francisco. and it is great to know that we have something at least going on with the public health department and i think that it will be a little bit, and we will be able to replicate and use elsewhere. and but i appreciate your work on this. >> thank you. >> thank you. >> okay. next up is michael baxter from the department of public health. >> thank you for the opportunity to be here, i am putting up a powerpoint and i can't speak these days without one. i want to thank you for the invitation to speak today and

talk about the process that we have gone through in the department of public hel and this it has been a process to take us two years to get here today and i want to acknowledge the youth commission and i would like just to say a shout out to mario who was the director a couple of years ago and was really was someone who helped to push this and a special thanks to the youth women over there who have really worked so close with us, and the youth commission works these days and really pushing issues. >> i agree. >> thank you. >> so, just very quickly, to talk about a time line, as i just said in spring of 2011, is when the youth commission approached dph and said there is something on the books for a number of years, how about if you step up and take the lead and start doing some work around the 12 n ordinance. it took us a few months in the department to really meet to talk about what we thought that we could do. we are a department that has about 8,000 employees and i think as people have mentioned the notion of having to come up

with a training with no funding and educating people is not an easy deal. but i think from the very beginning we got the notion that this is the right thing to do and we must do it. by the fall of 2011 we were able to bring together what i am going to call a steering committee and a group of representatives from the department of public health and the youth commission and david from the human rights commission and in the end, what we really came up to was that probably the best approach here is to create a video because we had to develop something where we could reach a lot of people, and not a lot of money. and really wanted to impact the behavior, attitudes and knowledge, so in the end when we came up with the video that would really speak for the youth's voice and to the audiences they are trying to educate. we were lucky that the state of california passed something

called the mental health services act which is really about all insurancing that the people of san francisco have adequate access to mental health services. and we were able to get an innovation's grant under that money to, and bay cat that is working on in third street and with the youth to train the youth and do the video and do this kind of work they were amazing ta work with. we did focus groups with the queer youth and family members and interviews with professionals. and in the end, we did much of the filming at the dimensions clinic which is at the castro mission's health center where we come in on thursday evenings and saturday afternoons and run a clinic for lgbtq youth and it is interesting to me that in 1998, when they opened the door is the year that 12 n was passed and i have say that looking back i didn't know that it was serindipdus that it came

together. it took six months to work with bay cat and make it. and the process was really very closely pulled together between bay cat working with the steering committee and we had a number of meetings and went back and forth and viewed the video and made the changes and also got to what we thought was an amazing product in july of 2012, the video was actually released our training goals in this video are pretty simple. the bottom line is that it is all about fostering and promoting respect and dignity for the young people that we serve. we hope through the video give people working with the youth people a sense of you can help to promote self-empowerment and a little bit of information and how to create a safe space and inviting people to come to and that really what we want the staff to do is to approach, the

people who we work with compassion and acceptance and bottom line, san francisco is staoet that is noted for its tolerance and this is something that we feel that this is critical to the work that we are doing in this. >> and some basic learning adjustment as i said is that we wanted to get some knowledge out there, and people sometimes have just the hardest time and how to initially approach somebody and talk to somebody. i think that the video says things like if you don't know something and you are conservative, ask, people will be much better if you ask a request rather than make assumptions and do it wrong. >> so then, what we did, to make sure that before we started writing this out in a larger fashion is that we did several pilot trainings. we chose to do two of the clinics that actually supervises the department of public health which is the school based clinic and the youth clinic located in the haight and serves young people

from around the city. in the training we do a pretest and talk about the background of 12 n and the goals and objectives and everyone watches a video which is about 30 minutes long and a post test and we open it up for discussion. and i think that in creating this video, again because looking at dph with so many employees we had to look at how we can get something out to many people so that is the video that we can make it web based and it has been made web based but the pilot also taught us that the ability to have the discussion among staff is pretty critical to this process. watching the video will impact you some what, being able to talk about and ask questions is i have to say, in my own mind really cheated this process. that is a good news and i think that we can make a better impact that way and the bad news is that costs a lot more money because you have facility tores but that is the