complaint within this category the committee divides these issues up and conducts their own investigation or site inspection to see if the fact -- that the issues that were brought up -- that there is reason to file a complaint on behalf of the committee or if the issues have been addressed and this has been a pretty successful way for us to see what's happening with this large portion of client complaints. the break down at the end of the report is that appendix -- and it gives you shelter by shelter look at the type of complaints that were seen and who filed the complaints and if there were complaints around specific staff, individuals, if there were a large number of complaints about one, two, or three staff. three of the

shelters, st. josephs, united council and compass received no complaints for the fiscal year. st. josephs received no complaints and every time the committee went out they felt it was to the standards of care and the others were generated from the committee and it's important to point out lark kin and mission neighborhood resources center, hamilton had a very low number of complaints and mission and larkin had one complaint for the whole fiscal year. >> supervisor. >> in the report -- >> supervisor campos. >> it's okay. i will go over you. >> so thank you very much and i do love the hat as well.

looking at the report and looking at the types of complaints filed with some of the shelters for many of them a recurring issue seems to be facilities and access. can you tell me a little more about what that would include, the issues that come up, something like that? >> for the rules committee members if you turn to page four of the report there say break down that supervisor campos is referring to and it gives a couple of examples of the types of complaints but with facilities and access a lot of the complaints have to do with language capacity, and i apologize for using a term like "a lot." i can give a break down if that is helpful. so with language capacity there is three areas. there is the fact

>> and then the last area with language has to do with printed materials at minimum from city and county and for the service provider need to be in english and spanish. so the committee has really worked with some of the smaller sites so if they didn't have the capacity to do translation it was small the previous staff on the monitoring

committee was bilingual and she did a lot of translation for sites and now we have three members opening to doing smaller translations. other access issues have to do with being able to use a phone at certain times, being able to be at the site during the site hours that are posted. those are some examples of facility and access. >> how does that -- thank you very much. how does hamilton for instance -- they have seems zero complaints in facilities and access, so what's the difference between hamilton and -- take i guess compass. how is it that one can be doing so well in this area but not the other? >> okay. i don't know that i

can speak directly to shelters' programs but i can give you an overview that some of the shelters are actually in a shelter so hamilton family shelter is in a shelter. >> i see. >> so it's run and operated by hamilton. compass on the other pand is cohoused in another facility so two floors of sro are a shelter and the other floors are for residents and they have a shared kitchen space and laundry space, so because this is a site i have gone to, compass i can let you know some of the issues were around signage and what was happening the agency that ran the shelter was putting things up in english only. the shelter who co-shared the space was getting dockd and the last two program managers made this a priority, so in the

last three months we have been at compass twice and once there was one violation and this last time there was none, so i think some of it -- we need to be as a committee and the report be more descriptive of the shared space and i am looking here and i apologize if that's not noted that this shares a space with another program whereas hamilton has full -- >> sure. i appreciate that. in terms of translation is there a general policy if there is signage it's included in different languages sore depends on the facility? >> >> so the standards of care only require that the signage coming from the city and county be in english and spanish. another standard requires if a client asks for it they need to provide for it, so if you need

something in turkish the site needs to work to provide that to you but the standard right now is english and spanish. >> i imagine there are cantonese speakers who would benefit from signage in that language as well. russian or -- >> when the standards were created there were discussion about including more languages but the end result was just those two languages listed, but again if an individual asks for something to be in vietnamese, in norwegian it has to be provided but i can't speak for the sites themselves or to providers here, but i think that's also a resource issue and they don't necessarily have the resources to make the translations in those languages. >> yeah, i understand that. i appreciate that. i do think if

there is a way that we can sort of address that issue, so that there is more of a systemic approach because it may be that people who need that are -- maybe they're afraid. maybe they don't know how because of a language barrier so that's an issue. i wanted to ask you just a final question, and again i really appreciate the tremendous work of this committee. one of the issues that came up over the years was the issue of with lgbt folk not feeling safe in some of the shelters, and i am wondering if you could talk a little bit about what steps had been taken to provide more culturally competency around lgbt issues with staff and ensure there is a

safe welcoming environment. >> so the committee -- that's not something we oversee. it gets confusing because we're reporting on it but i know there is a representative from the human service agency and there are two providers here that could address t what i can talk about the is human rights commission had a task force that ran for a certain period of time, i think 18 months, on housing and trans gender issues. they came before the committee last fiscal year and asked that we collect that data and by that data i mean when we do site visits and use a survey form that we're asking individuals if they feel like they're facing discrimination and one of the recommendations that came out of the human rights commission task force is that signage be placed up in shelters that says this is a safe space. the transphobic

comments will not be allowed and things like that. it's not uniformly happening in all of the providers but the larger ones and st. vincent de pauls and msc south has signage and they have given the template to the committee and we are changing the names and circulating that out. >> going forward whether a site provides -- i mean puts up that signage something you will report on? >> we do report on it and check on it but because it's not part of the standards of care it's not a complaint driven process so what we did with the information this year is see how some sites -- where it was posted and get the information and when we send it out and if we don't see it on a site visit

we hand it to the provider and so there is that signage and sites like larkin has signage -- i would say 60% have signage up in english and spanish. >> i would appreciate maybe you could share with me the information you have in terms of who has the signage and who doesn't? that would be great. i appreciate it. >> sure. thank you supervisor. >> supervisor tang. >> thank you and thank you supervisor campos for your questions. i wanted to build upon something he asked about and language services and access and i know for the shelters you have things worry about and health and hygiene issues and standards of care and perhaps language may not be as pressing of a need and i am wondering if you have or going to do an assessment on the demands in terms of the folks requesting certain things so we have data

showing what the potential needs are. i think -- yeah, it looks for three years you have been advocating for funding for language services through i guess the language line, but it would be good i think to be able to see what the needs and demands are. >> so a needs assessment -- again not to not answer the question but i think the contractor might be be able to talk about that. i think one of the issues is that the staffing involved to track that information right now might be challenging. the way the committee was able to get some numbers and those numbers are really little every year we do a turn away count so we're at a reservation location for total hours of operation and we measure things like how many shelter beds are available but some of the other things we measure someone came in and

presented with staff their -- what their interpretation available and someone was cantonese and no one to help them and one of the ways the committee came up with the $10,000 which may or may not be enough to see on use, so once -- every single site had it then you could measure how many times it was used by a cantonese speaker or russian speaker and with that information see if there needs more information provided in multiple languages, but this would just be a base for sites to start. again some of the larger shelters do have -- they're paying for the language service currently out of their own budget, so msc south, dolores street services, episcopal services and we haven't gotten information how

many times it's been used but we will follow up with it before the next budget letter is drafted. >> i assumed there are other presentationses. >> i was going to talk about the other report or do you have questions about the standards of care report? >> yeah, when i flip throughout 10 measurements i guess and looking at who is in compliance and so forth starting on page seven -- >> with the trainings? >> yeah. >> okay. >> and then what happens when i look at dolores street community services and of the 10 items indicators they have zero on six of them. what do you do with them?

>> so we don't oversee the shelters. the human services agency does and i know a couple questions have come up for them and i don't know if time for me to speak down and let them speak on the items because we report on the compliance with the training. i was going to talk about some of the things we're doing with training with the second report. >> why don't you continue with your presentation. >> sure. just to piggyback on superivsor yee's comments one of the issues the committee has been measures since the standards of care came about is training, and each year i think the committee has a deeper understanding of the cost involved in training, particularly when you look at large sites that run 24 hours. when you're pulling staff off to train them there has to be staff to cover. when you look at

smaller sites like providence who don't necessarily have this many resources as larger sites, training can be sometimes challenging and when you look at the family shelters like superivsor yee pointed out and go column by column you will see a larger compliance with family shelters and training just because of the way the contracts are arranged so one thing that happened this year there are two shelter monitoring committee staff -- unfortunately my co-worker couldn't be here today but jeff has 20 years experience in the system within the city and county so when we came on board the committee worked with roving health team and going into shelters and providing training on issues that relate to health, so bugs like bed bugs and lice and hand washing so we can make sure at a minimum

sites are receiving these trainings. the committee made additions to the website so we can populate it with more trainings and like national health care and homelessness and start dialogues with service providers on things that they may need to provide to meet these training requirements. the first and second quarter just covers the first six months of this year. what we're seeing is a little bit of a decrease in the amount of standard of care complaints from last fiscal year. the complaints continue to focus mostly on staff, facilities and access. one of the areas that we're trying to work on when we do site inspections, and there's

a signage issue, as i mentioned in the priest report, that when we come back to the office. >> >> we're making sure to send out the signage for the site so they have it right away. whether there are issues of danger or clients are making strong allegations of violence we're contacting the human service agency and making them aware of the complaints and through the meetings that the committee and hsa and others have been having we're trying to make the communication quicker so the way the complaint process is now a client can file a complaint of the site has seven days to respond. after that response the client has up to 45 days to tell us if they're satisfied or not. after that we have 10 days to do a complaint, so if you start measuring it out when an

initial complaint happens it maybe more than three months before there is a final finding so things around danger or allegations, threats were immediately notifying the contractor. the other thing that has happened from those meetings is as supervisor campos question about facility and access that the numbers that we provide, so on this report on page six there is the chart that gives the breakdown of how many facility complaints there were, health and hygiene, american with disabilities act and to try to break that down more when we go to a site we may see the same facility and access violations and get to a root of why it's happening. if a training or funding issue and show that level of specificity in the reports and the final thing that has come out of the meetings

although what we're seeing is a six month report every month the monitoring committee we're giving a standard of care every month and that has specificity to it and we're providing it to the shelters and the contractors themselves have it. >> any questions? thank you very much. >> thank you very much for your time supervisors. >> let's see i think -- [inaudible] are you here? >> unfortunately the chair couldn't be here today and vice chair dennis is working. that's why staff made a presentation but scott walton from the human services agency is here. >> thank you very much. >> good morning or good afternoon supervisor. i am scott walton from the human services agency housing and homeless division and i am here

representing joyce crum our director who is in other meetings today related to housing programs. if it helps i have comments to the questions you have already asked and then welcome any additional questions you have. i would like to start by saying i think the collaboration between the shelter monitoring committee, the department of public health and the human services agency about the workings and what we can do has greatly improved and we're continuing to work on that. one of the things we have noted which we really appreciated is when the reports come out quarterly and another month or two when they come out it's hard to use that in a timely fashion but their monthly summaries have helped us identify specific issues with providers or contractors in a much more effective manner. the access issues that were talked about on the language issue we

do produce all -- anything that we provide to be posted, rules, announcements and so forth we provide those in english and spanish and in large print. we try to work with providers around their unique issues and as the committee pointed out they're aware that some of the providers have access to language line and don't use it as heavily. we do -- i didn't bring this but we can produce demographics based on our shelter reference system that lets us know ethnicity and language needs of clients, so that is something that we can provide you if that's of interest that gives an overview. and another issue for us with access is related to transportation to and from shelters, and to that end we were asked about that. hsa

basically gives $29,000 budgeted for tokens each year and produces 1200 a month to use in the dealt and family system. when you realize that we have 1600 sleeping. >> >> across the system it's a challenge. we have a established token policy that highlights or prioritizes tokens to people that need them to get to and from places and one thing we did that isn't reflected in the report that you received and dph have readjusted how and ended their van service that provided some transportation for shelter users but they repositioned that

program for this fiscal year we have created and fund a shelter shuttle service which provides a predesignated route that's specifically focuses in the morning getting people from the out lying shelters back to central city and in the afternoon and evening out to the out lying shelters and pleased that service has taken hold and we had over 1400 people transported that way and doubled what we can do with our token budget and we still have that token budget that we provide. in the area of training this is an ongoing concern and it was the 12-13 report that was the first report by the shelter monitoring committee that focused according to the legislation which looks at the training experience or the

training staff has had when they're at the shelter for a year, so this was our first real look, this report you're seeing how it matched up to that and sometimes shelters were tallied against employees there for a couple of months and not a year and wouldn't have been trained on everything. to that end this helps focus the trainings. trainings are provided in three ways. our shelter contractors train their own staff. they provide the trainings as part of their own employment and employment advancement on these subjects. hsa directly provides trainings, particularly we're focused on providing the access for persons with disabilities training, and we have previous years created a shelter training manual that covers these issues but we have the shelters manage

that because they're hiring and dealing with staff time, and then another large component of the training has come from the department of public health and when the standards of care were first approved dph was offering trainings and hsa would coordinate to make sure shelter staff signed up for that and that covered health related topics and safety and health hygiene and so forth and there were a number of years that couldn't be done and their staff is now focused on doing some of the trainings where you see that component increased in the current fiscal year and again that was not in place for the report year that you have. to that end we are working with dph and the shelter monitoring committee to identify the items they're going to cover in training so we can focus

training on additional items but to that end this morning we trained 75 staff for access for persons with disabilities and have two more trainings set up before the end of the fiscal year to meet the compliance on that issue and that one we were aware was below standard and then some of the other items that you brought up. we are pleased to get better information about complaints. one of our concerns was if clients didn't follow up we wanted a method to hear about those because the experience of the shelter monitoring committee and their own visits to sites means that they can give us information even if the client hasn't said aye or nay to the response. we make sure they respond and the committee let it is us

know if someone isn't responding and we follow up on that. you ask why one shelter is successful and one isn't? in the family shelters the stay is longer from three to six months and easier to maintain. there are less complaints. if you look at the number of complaints and the size of the shelters there is a direct correlation. our adult system has 90 beds and we make use of every bed and if someone doesn't claim a bed it's released for the night and we will see 6,000 users in the system and naturally there is a higher number of complaints. not that we're satisfied with that but i wanted to explain the difference. in terms of the lgbt issues we do monthly meet with our contractors. it is an issue that we discuss along with other access issues and people feeling safe. ideas are exchanged how signage works.

we also do our own looking at complaints because unfortunately in congregate settings many complaints are about guest to guest statements and are rule enforcement system and our shelter grievance process doesn't allow us to deny someone service if a staff person didn't witness the complaint so we can address it but we can't use some of the same rules we would use if a staff person witnesses somebody using verbal or physical assault on people. it is a big concern of us and we are looking at the fact that even though we continue to work on development of expansion of the shelter system with lgbt focus set of shelter beds we wanted the entire system to be as welcoming for that community and every one of our communities and our shelters providers take

that very seriously and try to do conflict resolution if this are people who are in conflict. we try to remind clients we're not trying to change their personal opinions but in this setting everyone is welcome, and then in terms of the overall process i want to end by general comments by the fact that i think the three components of department of public health which provides the oversight of the shelter monitoring committee and roving health services within the system. our shelters resource centers and sites are providers and i think we are continuing to progress in terms of making these systems that have been put in place with legislation even more functional to better our systems across the board. >> supervisor campos. >> thank