Skip to main content

tv   [untitled]    July 21, 2013 6:00am-6:31am PDT

6:00 am
folks know we have language services >> thank you, president chiu. i want to say make one comment about the as - personally, i think that if we were a city that put communicating effectively with whether or not language our community speaks we wouldn't have to have tier one and two. this is supposed to be a normal part of the business why are not we thinking about this from signage to the way we communicate. we want to keep our expletive e
6:01 am
competitive edge our ambassadors and interpreters are out on the streets everyday trying to talk to communities residents and others about language rights and services and our cb o partners are out there doing the work of clients also telling me that you know, i have the right to request translation and interpreter. my ideal would be to have every single employee tell them they can assess those services and we can move forward with the community partners they're doing the heavy lifting in educating our residents. i'm proud to support them but we
6:02 am
have to work together to make sure it's correct and accurate and they check us in our interpretations and we do the same for them and i really want to thank our office for the work they've done and i know that a number of my colleagues have advocated for more money we have to put our money where our work is i want to >> tracy: thank you for your work to get the language accessibility and the services available that were i know that essentially there was a beginning of a lawsuit that was suggested in the area of their lack of compliance with the ordinance requirements there and i think we are as a city beyond
6:03 am
oakland but i want to make sure we're pushing the edge to insure we have a city that moves forward. i want to ask if our city building manager rob can come up. thank you for being here i know you have a lot of work to do. >> i'm with the building management and security systems. i want to give you an update. since the last time, we talked the hardware is expected within three to four weeks we should have that in the first week of august and that will be four monitors two at the ground floor
6:04 am
entrance and two one at each main level. those touch panels will be here first, the the programming we're working on that at this point instead of doing the website as originally planned we've partnered with e t and go through software recessions and those should be helpful. our timelines we're planning at this point to go live by the end of august. if there are no other questions president chiu. i want to make a quick comment you, you know, this topic has come up and i think itself fair to say that we've having had other discussions i'm pleased in
6:05 am
the next month this is actually going to happen. colleagues we had raised the issue in 2009 and city hall was trial not language assessable and we've been asking the city hall management to address this and i'm looking forward to seeing that >> thank you very much. there was some need to do software revisions instead of something that can be scaleable and this will be a good solution >> thank you. the next department is our director of 311 nancy. >> thank you so much for being here. >> morning. i had sent in a power point but
6:06 am
i don't know if it went through. so good morning supervisors. i'm nancy director of the 311 customer service center. i'll give you a brief over of the language assistance to the public. so at this time which people call 311 they have a language option selection one for english and two for spanish and 3 for chinese or 5 for the t g u assess. if they press the spanish or chinese option and we have a representative available it will transfer the call to one of them or it would go to any of our 64
6:07 am
customer service reps and the rep would connect them to the language line interpreter at this .311 we have 5 bilingual chinese rep and 3 spanish speaking rep and when we put any posts for employment we always encourage the sign language interpreters and others. we have nearly 1.5 million calls and have those we have 16 thousand plus that required assistance other than english. this represents about 1.1 percent of calls that were placed to 311. we did incur the language.
6:08 am
we monitor the language line calls we have to make sure their answering quickly so we do monitor that and we do in partnership with the other departments we had complaints of our reps not connecting quickly enough so at this point we see an average of connecting time of 30 seconds the wait might be longer, however, and if any reps wait for over 3 minutes we have an internal process to work be. and last year, we got less than 5. we have seen an improvement and
6:09 am
we were able to negotiate with the partnership with the o sea there's a penalty were there charges if they're not connecting us quickly enough. within the non english call percentages our top 5 languages our chinese and spanish are our main ones and the other 3 are research korean and japanese. actually that we're getting. russian. and what languages are being requested out of the 1.3 percent of non-english language outside of the spanish and chinese we get a range of languages and that's where we rely on the language line assistance because we'll get some that are not as well known so this is the
6:10 am
various requests we've received. when we work with the departments we do try to take into consideration the language issues such a when we partnered with the leadership of president chiu and the city administrator in working with victim services where they didn't have access to the city attorney's office after hours we worked with them so after hours those calls come to 311 so we can assist them and refer them to the shelter or connect them to police and we have the website with the perspire they made the site so resources would be available. we have partnered with the
6:11 am
sunset city clerk's so we're recognizing that a large majority of them are spanish speaking and all the calls went to 311 so we could assist with those communities. as adrian mentioned we train the community ambassadors so when they're out on the streets they can educate the people on the 311 services and that's our presentation >> i have a quick question so the 1.1 percent of all calls to that 11 require assistance other than english highway has that changed over the years. >> we would love to see people help us, you know, get outreach to let people, you know, we provided that service but we have seen it stay at that level.
6:12 am
>> and yeah. it does seem like the community based partners you limited english speaking person would be a vietnamese popcorn to call the center. i know for the language assess network the african c a has other partnerships but i want to see on increase of the call given it was 346 percent of the population that speaks other than the language at home so 1.1 percent that population in the city shows me there's a lot of folks not educating the services. and there's a delay in the lag time so that's a barrier as
6:13 am
well. 30 seconds on hold is a long time for people >> first of all, i want to thank 311 and your literally you've been a great model. my question is about really main lines within city government that are not 311 like the non emergency line if you're calling the planning department or any of the lines we have. oftentimes you call and you don't speak english it's hard to access that could you talk about that with the authorities of the other main lines and how to make them assessable. >> a number has access to the translations as well, with the
6:14 am
reports. when you call that line you get a live person and that person can't speak the language >> i'd prefer the police department to respond to that because my understanding is they can connect to an interpreter. in terms of the main numbers to the other departments they have a city contract with the line so each city has their own code to dial to get the interpreter services >> so if you have an english speaker and they don't recognize the language coming in hopeful that person can figure out that. >> what we do for 311 we could have the same problem the language line has like a cheat
6:15 am
sheet per say that allows us to learn what the language, you know, request is within their language and what we found is most people who don't speak english do learn - we know how to connect them. >> supervisor campos. i want to follow up on the question that supervisor mar had made. 36 percent of folks here speak another claung. so, i mean something tells me a lot of those folks are not aware or don't feel like they can call
6:16 am
311. i know your office don't great work human resources how do you publicize the 311 service so it wloongz to everyone not just the english speaker >> well, we don't have marketing funds so the best way to advertise is to make sure that every department has the 311 logo. we try to get brochures to them. one of the things we do is partner with the school district and part of their third grade curriculum is to learn about san francisco so we worked on two of the plans four did school district so the teachers will
6:17 am
teach and under government section plan we're teaching them about 311. if children learn about it they'll go home and tell their parents about that interest so particularly i know that for myself my grandmother would come to me we recognize that's part of the culture so if we teach the children they, educate their parents. we try to have the brochures at the library but it is difficult. i mean with no marketing money we're just trying to be creativity on how we know do more outreach on limited english speaking communities. >> i appreciate the challenge.
6:18 am
i would at least ask for consideration of marketing in those monolingual community. i know we all see the huge benefit of 311 it's a great program and service and clearly there's a large sector of the population that's not educating it. with that population that you need to go beyond the typical outreach and you actually engage in some marketing. i don't know what the finding limitations are but that's something we should explore and with the kind of investment it's worth it >> so as we recognize the need that's one way we can educate people by transferring them to
6:19 am
311 i completely agree with what you're saying. >> thank you. i appreciate it. the next speaker is from the department of children and youth. i don't see - >> and then right afterwards we have 3 more folks.
6:20 am
>> so thank you for the slides and . >> it would be easier for me - okay. >> thank you. >> good morning supervisors from the department of youth and their families. maria our director had a meeting scheduled so i'm going to be here. i'm going to go over what we're doing we're a two tier department we realize that language assess it is important. particularly in educating
6:21 am
services. we make sure that our children can access our services we work closely with other departments. all of the services we provided are done through partnership with the community based organizations. so one of the ways we mayor to get out the information to the community is by working with our cb o partners. so if all our partners have to meet some minimum standards and language it one of them. so all programs and resources have to assure effective communication and with the - the way we do this is we require all the applications and rules and scheduled etc., to be translated into the community that's being being served. we are require that the comment
6:22 am
show an respectful attitude towards the residents. we work throughor operation to make sure we're getting the information out correctly is through a variety of ways. all the information we do have translated into different languages. for example, when we did our assessment we went to different communities meetings we make sure we had the interpreters present. as i stated before including the surveys are pushed the english, spanish and chinese and about thirty he percent of our staff speak english like thirty
6:23 am
percent. annoy we just started a new 3 year process and we have an rfp and a new strategic strategy. we've grand more money into our lisp development strategies so that's a new strategy that's going to be going forget and >> all programs are to be presented and the programs served about 3 hundred plus children. i'll be happy to answer any questions >> i was going to thank you for the presentation i think the new english learner strategy is a great way to learn about the great opportunities for the
6:24 am
department of children i did not get and families. i had a question you serve about 11 thousand children with language prosecutors but the population in the city is probably much hyper that and i wonder if you have any thoughts about why - i think there's about a little bit over 11 thousand kids in the city and your serving only about half of them >> this is the information. i mentioned before we have some minimum standards and so when we - and a part of my understanding we actually got out and look at the information that the cb os are keeping on their participants and one of the requirement that you actually - and so this is based on what's been reported by the community
6:25 am
organization that we actually serve. i could follow-up with program staff to find out why that's lower than reported. >> and i think it's commendable your staff is about a third of them speak a language other than english. it would be useful in the language access he report to see what bilingual or multiple lingual staff you have. i don't see any other questions thank you for the presentation. the next speaker is the chief attorney for the office of complaints >> thanks for having me here. i'm here on behalf of my colleague.
6:26 am
we unfortunately had little notice of this but we're rather prepared to give a report on what we do. as you know and for the sake of everyone who might be asking the o sea is the office of complaints. we began operations in 1983. we're charged with investigating complaints and receiving and making i haven't had complaints of any success including acts or omissions by scorn members of the san francisco police department. we have 35 staff. and in i will say that there are - approximately 5 main areas where the occ focuses it's language access effort. there are more than those but
6:27 am
the main 5 we have is the services we provided directly like intact we have to have staff that can take complaints in many languages. we also have to have investigations we have to investigators and individuals in order to facilitate our investigations themselves. we have a program that we mediate the complaints. we have an outreach component we talk about the certifies we provided but help with the communicating needs of tier one departments, the san francisco police department and the fact they're also available and, of course, we help with policy recommendations for the tier one departments the san francisco police department as well.
6:28 am
v very briefly we have our staff at this point speaks multiple languages like france mandrin and cantonese. we have the access to the - our staff if their you unjacob to help someone in person or telephone we'll definitely use the language line. in 2012 most of the complaints were in english. we had a number in many other languages. 2 percent were in spanish, 5 cases in cantonese and only one russian case and a number of others languages not listed here
6:29 am
bylaw but our annual report is on line. we also take complaints by phone and acknowledging and immediately call people back payroll now a very large part of our outreach is by brochure. we have our office services brochure translated into 5 different languages, spanish, china's which can be read either way vietnamese and russian and arabic as well. we have a mediation brochure that we can mediate concerns. we have those brochures in the 5 languages as well. we also provided know your rights for youth san francisco brochure that's also translated
6:30 am
into those 5 languages. a very, very large part of the mission of the organization cc is to provide outreach to make sure that the community is aware we exist so they know where to come to voice their complaints or concerns about members of the police department. as part of our outreach effort and given the fact we don't have the budget we make sure that in every individuals performance plan every investigator and attorney and staff men are required to put in minimum hours per year in outreach. that means to us to go out in the community and going to meetings and describing all our brochures. the individuals get out of the office and the