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 you

mr. chairman and mr. walton and i want to follow up on the lgbt piece. is there any thought of -- or maybe it's provided for cultural competency and wondering if you have thoughts about that. >> it's part of the standard of care training so it's included and some of the providers offered cultural competency exposure to our guests as a way to move it beyond the staff and into a understanding of the community. those attempts have not been -- i don't want to say well received but not well attended by shelter users, but the standard of care does cover

that which gets into poverty issues, lgbt, transgender included and any number of other cultural issues as well as the training covers issues, components deal with issues of working with people with mental health and so forth so we're covering all of that. we triering t make -- trying to make the community as well as with staff as welcoming as possible. >> right. >> and that is with signage and responding to issues at a timely mearnt is additional components that we do? >> i guess that brings up what is required of someone staying at a shelter? obviously there are limitations and wondering if you have any thoughts? >> well, we use a system of rules. to be in our shelter -- first and foremost you need to

self care because they're not board and care or medical facilities and we have rules and the rules include no physical violence, no weapons, no illegal substances in general but they also include no threats, no verbal assaults and so forth but if you have a shelter with 200 people on a congregate floor and 2-4 staff at night monitoring they are not going to hear and observe and when two people come forward with a conflict they need to try to resolve it but not deny the service rules and warnings if they didn't witness it themselves. now if someone is continually complained about they watch them to catch them but i don't know in a system that we try to make it as welcoming -- if you state you're

homeless we try to accommodate you. it's hard to put a layer of requirement over that when these are people looking for a bed for the night and a meal and a shower, so we have to try to do it in a creative way. >> do you think -- is there a place -- especially if you're transgender and you're being harass or there is fear for your safety where do you go? who did you report that to? >> we want clients first to go to staff because they can address it immediately. as a background for transgender we take people at the gender they choose and people can change their gender in our shelter system but they're gender assigned and that's a safety

issue. we encourage them to report to staff and up the chain but the committee can get complaints. we can get complaints directly. we see complaints come through the mayor's office of disability because there is synergy and overlap and we try to be aggressive. as soon as we hear about a complaint we try to notify the shelter. we're pleaseed in many cases they know about the situation but our point we're trying to solve the people that can do something about it. if they're afraid to talk to staff if they come to us we can encourage and support them to do that and even participate if that will help them feel at ease, but we encourage it to be reported and there are times in hearings and so forth we hear statements and we're following up afterwards tell us detail. we haven't heard about it. we want to

address it and that's where we look at information in timely a fashion as we can. we try to make it possible to make complaints and not speak to anybody such as dropping off a note and they are addressed as seriously as they can be but sometimes there's little information. we had floor meetings when there say specific issue and there's always -- not always, there are friction points for people who are transgender from people who don't identify as transgender but share that gender and sometimes that's a conflict resolution between individuals. >> thank you. >> so when i had the briefing the issue of tokens came up and this seemed to be more information right here, and the more -- this is about tokens.

>> yes. >> okay. let me just ask. what do people use tokens for? >> well, people would take tokens for any number of purposes. because we're limited in our supply our token policy focuses them for somebody who has a reference trying to get to the. >> >> reservation trying to get to the shelter, to job, mental health appointments, intake appointments and so forth and seniors. we give tokens to seniors just because they're seniors, but -- >> maybe we wrote need to give seniors tokens in a few more months. >> and we also pay attention to what is available to people. the clients who are county benefit that can get their fast pass we encourage them to do that. we promote the reduced fast pass system, the life line system, to clients to support

them to get transportation access. it's free for them to use however they wish. >> so the shuttle that you spoke of. >> yes. >> where does that go? >> in the morning it goes to the out lying shelters providence and first friendship -- >> from where? >> they go to the sites and bring the clients in town. we have morning routes going to the out lying shelters. all of the routes are one way. shay show up at providence and whoever wants to come into central city can ride the shuttle or first friendship and a shuttle that comes into the city and other services are available since that's not a 24 hour shelter. neither of them are and in the evenings they do the reverse and taking families out to first

friendship or to the reservation sites and taking the clients where they might have a reservation so it's a route identified system so clients can count on it. they know when it's coming and so forth. the vans have space for basically 12-14 people but because we're doing single routes nobody is riding -- they're getting on at one place and getting off at the next stop and easier to manage. like i said we launched this program july 1, 2013 and as of last month we are 1400 riders so it's adding to what we offer with tokens and replaced the other system and had more users besides shelter users and sometimes they couldn't show because they had medical emergencies and by having a routed system and set schedule

and how we built up the usage over the first nine months. >> i guess i am asking these questions because i mainly don't know if i should be concerned or we should be concerned that the clients are not getting to their medical appointments, not getting to employment opportunities and so forth because they don't have a token, and i hate to see that being the barrier to their welfare so the question i have is -- does anybody know what the need is, whether we need to expand the usage of tokens or what? >> that's a very difficult question even for us to answer and that's in part because clients -- i think if we said we will give everybody two tokens a day clients would take them. we don't know necessarily what they're used for. we track the

use afnlg the tokens with the allocation of 1200 a month meaning our sites will say superivsor yee two tokens for a medical appointment or whatever, so they are tracking that usage but it's hard to say whether they're turned around. now the shelter monitoring committee may go and a site might not have tokens when asked and maybe an issue they're out and didn't report to us. we maybe out later in the month but that doesn't happen a lot. usage is balanced to our availability because people know what it's going to be now it's 1200 a month for so many years so it's a really difficult question to ask. i think we would have to look at some sort of assessment means that would tell us what people want and there are people -- i'm not saying this is a major part of the problem. but it's hard to ask people what

they want. they will take tokens because it has a monetary value and might use it for other means if they get a hold of them. >> the people that are getting a hold of them now are they abusing that? >> i don't think they are. we're focused on the reservation site and give them out when they have a challenge and give one to come back the next morning. obviously a transfer is not good for a 12 hour period, and we do see usage of them, but i don't think we have abuse now, but it's probably because we have these rules of people stating what the purpose of their need for a token is. go ahead. >> can we actually test this through maybe a pilot for one or two months? you keep -- i guess in my mind if you have a system

where you have rules and uses of tokens and not just giving them away, and there might be actually more demand and they run out of tokens but we don't know what the demand is. can't we have a pilot of one or two months period -- maybe one month and we over supply tokens but keep the same rules at the end of the period so you would know what your demand would be and it shouldn't cost all that much more. >>i think what we could start with -- again we meet with our contractors once a month so this month we will meet with them. i would like to take this idea to them and see how we might structure that in a way. i get your point. have more tokens available. still follow the same rules and see if there say need for a greater number of tokens and at least we can put a dollar value on that. we do pay

full value for it is tokens. we're paying $2 a token and get the 1200 a month. >> the point for me is we're spending money on the shelter and so forth and so forth and here one extra token for somebody might make a difference in the world and we're talking $2 and extending it in the facility. that's my point. >> what we will do is we will have a discussion with our providers. we think of something and we can stay in touch with and you let you know what is happening on that. i don't have a ready thought how to implement without getting their input because they're the ones who actually interface with clientses who need the tokens. >> no. i appreciate if you could bring it back. >> yes. >> okay. any other questions? >> thank you.

>> thank you. any other -- any public comments on this item? seeing none public comment is closed. [gavel] . this is an informational item, is it? so we don't need to vote on anything. madam clerk is there anything else? >> mr. chair we need to take action. >> we need to take action. >> continue to the call of the chair. >> okay. >> okay. make the motion to continue this hearing to the call of the chair. >> okay. with no objection then this motion passes. [gavel] thank you very much. >> thank you. >> madam clerk is there any other item? >> no. that concludes our business for today. >> meeting is adjourned. [gavel]