from the school district and legal folks that is where it's beginning. we will see more youth as they're identified and have issues from trauma with primary care. fortunately we're embedded with primary care and we will find out and treage them to other services and we have youth that come from many countries and certainly are constantly working with lots of folks. >> thank you so much. >> sure. >> good afternoon i am sylvia and director for service service with the human services agency. child protective services provides investigation and intervention services to children and their families that are referred for allocation of abuse and neglect and the

department is responsible for investigating the service determining if children should be in the home or removed from the home on a temporary basis while working with the children and identifying safety issues and reunifying children if possible. if not we determine a permanent plan for the child through legal guardianship or adoption. all children in need of protection of abuse and neglect are eligible to get services and it's the legal responsibility to seek out relatives to serve as a viable placement option for the youth within the united states and within their home country so that's what our staff would do, locate relatives and place them with them. at this point family and children services has not seen

an increase of the children come being to our attention. many children are being placed with relatives. we have been in discussions with the state department of social services that indicated that is where the federal government is placing these children is relative and family -- other family members. we anticipate as ken said that as children remain in this country for some period of time we may at a later point and time begin to see children coming to our attention. they would come to our attention if there were any allegations of abuse or neglect or through mental health services they were referred to us because there were issues with the families they are with. any foster care providers that we utilize are required to complete a state licensing process for background checks and a grounds inspection, and most recently this require became a standard for all

relatives and non related extended family members so we are now in the process of having the same-same standard as we call it for relatives and extended family members and licensed caregivers. we are working with the department of public health to develop a first encounter protocol and i am working with the state department of social services in discussing this issue and usually we have about a monthly call. we've provided the departments numbers -- contact numbers for our child abuse hot line and for our foster parent recruitment line because we have seen an uptake in people interested in taking children

into their care. specifically they're asking about these children although we're not seeing them come to our attention. >> i had a quick question. i know that the count of families known or defined by sfusd as being homeless is 160 students and i am curious if that also accompanies unaccompanied youth? okay. so i will save that question if you don't know that but how do they navigate through obtaining safe and secure shelter through hsa? >> the unaccompanied minors? >> yes. >> if a unaccompanied minor is referred to us we will try to determine the age of the child because our services go up to age 21 and it's very important that we distinguish between a child that is under the age of 18 and what we call a non minor dependent between the ages of

18 and 21. we have a number of foster care placements that we would place a child in. while placing a child in foster care we are looking for relatives or extended family members to place the child with and we try to determine whether that child needed to stay here with family members and receive services and then connect them to services. >> what do they do while you're looking for relatives or foster care placement? >> so they would go to one of the foster homes and we would enroll them in school if they're under the age of 18. if they're over the age of 18 we have an independent living program that we would refer them to where they would begin working with them on a number of things trying to determine what their educational status is, whether they could work and try to find them employment, determine what

the health needs are, if there are mental health needs so that program would work with them if they're over 18. >> and between 18 and 21 they qualify for our regular adult shelter services? >> yes, they do. >> okay. thank you. >> okay. >> i apologize. commissioner wynns has a question. thank you . >> could you tell me how many students -- how many unaccompanied minors, kids in this group are in foster care? >> we don't really have -- i can't tell you the exact number of unaccompanied minors we have right now. we don't generally get a large number of unaccompanied minors so it's not a frequent thing that happens. >> i understand but we're

talking about emerging new phenomenon so we don't have any idea there are? >> we have not received any in the recent -- i would say six months. >> thank you. >> hi ms. wong. >> good afternoon. i am christina wong, a special assistant to the superintendent and joined by kimberly coats who is the director of school health and mr. perez and jan walker representing people services. they're available to answer questions after that presentation. so unaccompanied immigrant children has been part of our community for years and while we don't keep track how many are identified at this point that are unaccompanied ip grint children we keep track of the new comer students from central american countries and

other countries of origin so looking at the data you my from 11-12 school year we had 102 and the next year we had 50% increase, and from 12-13 to 13-14 we had approximately a 67% increase. at this time we have been in session for over a month, and we already have 205 students from central american countries. in looking at the data that was available to us during the summer months and this has been updated. right now we have a total of 185 students in the san francisco area. at the time when we had this data we had 173. what is important for us that we needed to find out the school age and the different school levels that wered included in the number of unaccompanied children or recorded and as you can tell

here that a overwhelming majority are at the high school level. we also have data by zip code and you could see by neighborhood there is a percentage from mission burnel area but a significant from ingleside and bay view and visitacion valley and the southeast sector of the city. knowing this and these are the new comer pathways. we have 12 of them across the different levels. at the elementary level we have stand alone sites at chinese mission center and mission education center and middle school we have pathways within the comprehension schools in these areas and we have a new comer strand there so students are able to receive support but take other classes as well and similar to high school we have new comer pathways at lincoln, marshal and sf international

and also washington high school. >> excuse me ms. wong because i don't remember where is the location for chinese education and mission education center. >> chinese education is across from ports smith across and mission is in the heart of noe valley. and knowing that most of the school age children were at the high school level and they were mostly residing in the southeast sector we began to increase capacities at the high school level so even before school started we increased capacity at marshal school in the southeast sector so that the students that were unaccompanieded have access to a new comer pathway as well as we looked at the other high schools and making plans to increase those capacities as well. this represents the system of support that we have for new comers at

the high school level so as a new comer after they're assigned at the educational placement center they meet with a school counselor at their school and receive academic orientation, placement and any type of resources and referrals. the school counselor then works closely with the new comer pathway teacher to identify any type of transitional academic support and of course get the intensive english language development that is core to the pathway so the teachers get to know the students and better understand what their needs and services they would benefit. they are referred to the high school wellness program where they will get the physical, mental, health services and referrals to other social services. one thing that is great about the wellness programs is that they have significant school partnerships so in the district we do have

school partnerships with cyc and [inaudible]. those organizations provide new comer after school programs, peer support, leadership development. both of these programs are funded by dcyf. we have partnerships with legal services like the san francisco immigration network that includes [inaudible]. legal services for children and other service providers and this represents the support that any new comer, even though there is a cycle represented here, any new comer can access it at any point. part of -- one of the services that is under the wellness under this program is a program for those that lack a fixed night time resident and reside in a

shelter, motel, hotel, temporary housing, abandoned building or temporary foster care. of course these students have educational rights that include immediate enrollment, attend the school they're attending, transportation to schools and participation in all programs and they of course can contact the district liaison to resolve any dispute. it's important that these students have critical services available to them. they may receive assistance with school enrollment, advocate on the transition of students, handle disputes and offering tutoring and we know that many of the unaccompanied immigrant children are trying to benefit from. they get free breakfast and lunch and get backpacks and supplies and resources and referrals to other agencies.

so we have done two different things in terms preparation thus far. in the class classroom we have gathered the data to project and anticipate the number of new comer cutche -- unaccompanied children in the district. we have increased the number of seats in the high school and in the multilingual department we are developing professional learning community ands so the teachers are prepared to serve the students. many students are students with interrupted gaps in education so it's been beneficial for teachers to learn some of the best practices. in terms of support services we do have a cost department working group that has evaluated the district's new comer system of support and made significant

enhancements. we hired a social worker based out of school health and coordinating services for the unaccompanied immigrant children and provide professional development for the staff in each of the different pathways and offering support to a number of our schools that actually have been receiving new comer students even though they're not a formal pathway. we will collaborate with other departments that you will hear from today and especially legal and housing and social services and we are fortunate that the foundation community has been supportive of this and we received funds to support the position, the coordinator position, and funds to support our teachers and our support staff. >> can i ask a few questions on this? so when you say cross department are you kind of talking about office of curriculum? >> right, yeah. >> okay.

>> from school health, from multilingual pathway department -- in terms of all the folks in the departments that i described and all of the representatives are making sure that the services are providing and we will develop guidelines and protd cols in the next months so wherever there are students they have access to the information and the resources needed. >> and for the new coordinator, and i am glad this coordinator has started. i guess are they going to be interfacing directly with the unaccompanied minor students? are they working with the teachers? what is kind of their role going to look like? [inaudible] >> they're doing both. >> okay. >> both. >> how do you expect them to work with the city and connect them to other services whether

it's housing or the of the services that you mentioned? >>i think what you heard today about developing resources that's going to be really key. this coordinator can be the conduit to make sure that the resources are provided for the children and their sponsors so they're aware of the type of services that the city is providing. >> okay. >> mr. chu. >> good afternoon committee members. i am director the community department with the mayor's offices of community development. for the legal service portion many of you know that the board of supervisors and the mayor recently allocated over $1 million per year over a

two-year period to support legal services to represent both these unaccompanied children and their family members. that figure was based on an estimate of 300 to 500 children and annual case load of approximately 40-50 cases per attorney, specially $100,000 per attorney. we are hoping that within the month of october and the next two weeks to issue a request for proposals to secure one provider or a set of providers. i think it will be a collaborative proposal with a lead organization that will house probably eight to 10 attorneys with the lead agency providing a lead attorney that will be responsible for the service coordination, liaison with the immigration court, with the school district, with legal

service providers and the city that will on a regular basis convene providers, coordinate services, coordinate referrals to attorneys, leverage pro bono representation because we feel that we need to bring in the resources of the private bar in order to maximize the leverage of these dollars and possibly to ensure the service. right now we have the money set aside for two years. there may be children that need representation in addition. we realize that funding from the city is generous it really is targeting only those san francisco children and their families and we've had a number of discussions with the advocates about the need to encourage other counties to provide support to the 80% of the children and families in the

docket that are not necessarily served by these dollars. we hope to have this program up and running in november. we've begun discussions with representatives of the legal services community and the social service providers from which have already begun working with the children and families. we realize it's going to be a heavy lift. this particular area of immigration requires expertise especially in a asylum and other statuses. we are hoping to leverage the expertise here in san francisco. i think that it will be a -- really a pilot program which we hope can be used in other jurisdictions for these same kinds of services and we have

confidence with the high degree of expertise with the legal providers in san francisco we will be successful with these efforts. ultimately we don't know our success rate with this program. we assume that we will be successful given the strength of our arguments, but time will tell. we're happy to be able to work with the board and the mayor's office to give an update how successful we are on preventing deportation and allowing for reunification as much as possible. >>i have a question. i know while the surge of unaccompanied minors is new for the city it's not a completely new phenomenon so what has been the success rate in the past by preventing deportations by the legal and pro bono services we have?

>>i will have to get back to you on that question. i know our office hasn't historically provided resources in that area. i know there are areas and asian pacific islander and special outreach and specializes in asylum cases so i can get back to you about the specific nature. i think because these kinds of cases represent -- how will i say -- the success of these kinds of cases often depend on the political landscape involved with the countries of origin, so past success may or may not resemble success in these cases but i will check back and get back to you with an answer for that. >> i don't know if this is the appropriate question for you or someone else but i know this issue came up several years ago

when i was a school board member on the select company and systems and [inaudible] and justice and sfusd and how we were having trouble sharing information largely due to privacy factors and others, and i see the same potential issue here, and i am curious what we're going to do about that. it doesn't seem like we have a clear of the actual numbers of the unaccompanied minors in san francisco but looking at some of the data maybe 300 at least known youth. are we going to be able to have a master data base that tracks these young people? because i would hate to kind of duplicate services or have folks not sharing information that could really help these young -- like the 200-300 people really be successful in san san francisco because i think the odd recess

against them right now and they're not likely to be successful in order of the things before them and from the past and how can we aggregate everyone's data and everyone talking about the services we're providing and i know you're the last presenter but this is really for all of the departments. >> it's an excellent question and i can speak in terms of my department. looking at this issue in a different context when working with hope sf and coordinate efforts. i will say this is a particular tricky population to aggregate data because you have hippa requirements. you have minors that have special protection on the school district side. you have legal providers that have upon confidentiality requirements with their service and you have individuals just by

the nature of their status here are less inclined to disclose information so you perhaps target the most difficult group of people to share information with across all of the service areas w that being said we will certainly be working with the children and their parents to try and gain the consent to share information to the degree possible. again in this situation you have unaccompanied minors and it's not clear to me who would give consent on their behalf to share information across the health department, the school district, and legal service providers. >> are you looking at ms. wong to come up as well. i am curious -- >> i'm not sure -- [inaudible] >> i think it would be good to have the same youth teacher --

mental health counselor, houser able to talk to one another and share information, so it's going to really take a village to make sure these youth are successful and ifer we're not sharing information and is a lowed in identities then i am worried we're not going to get there. >> so i share your children and i have been digging around that question too, so i have been working with the federal government to try to get them to actually give us the names of these kids and the locations of where they're being placed because the one unique thing about the surge is they're coming through -- you know they're turning themselves over at the border or the majority at least, not all of them, and they are taken -- our health services system takes them in and they get placed so the federal government actually knows the name and addresses and their age and the only information they have made available to some folks is the zip code for which

the children are placed and their age, so i share the aggravation because i feel we have a great head start they're tracked from the minute they get across the border but we don't have access to the information so as brian was saying this is a difficult group so once they arrive there is a network that embraces the children and connect them to services but to get that network to share information with this population as i asked these same questions. they're vulnerable. they're afraid of giving that -- so it doesn't mean we shouldn't be asking the question and figuring it out. >> you brought up a good point. can minors consent to the sharing of the information? >> i think ms. wong said that and from the parents get parental consent or have the

sponsor consent if they're living with a family now. getting back to what ms. kent said one of the most consistent ways to identify the individuals is when we receive assignments from the immigration court because everyone on the docket will be identified to the legal service provider and the attorneys will be aware of the support system from the school district and the department of public health and at that point we will do our best to have that individual consent to having a structure of support available to them. >> thank you mr. chu. i apologize you're not the lot of presenter. we have the office of civic engagement and immigrant affairs. thank you for being here. >> thank you supervisors and commissioners. i just have three slides and i'm going to skip to what we're doing particularly relative to the unaccompanied children. we have

been working for the past months with our nonprofit and partners in san francisco in san francisco and washington d.c. and the policy institute, and a number of other organizations and i think chair kim you put it -- you hit it right on the button that data and having numbers and names is extremely difficult. data collection is going to be really important for san francisco, especially if the city is going to tap into any state or federal funding that may become available. if we can forward to the next slide i think we're one slide behind here. we have a mayor's page and bilingual

resource guide and translated materials provided to families by the san francisco immigration court. we translated a number of websites in the city to multiple languages including the aca website and victims portal and immigration and doca and we will provide updated information and translations on the unaccompanied children web page and we hope to work with the grant team to also have this translated, not -- we have it in spanish but we need it translated in my an languages as well and our community ambass doors do outreach and education about city programs and healthy sf, 311, the city id card so they will do that in language. also we're coordinating our efforts with the mayor's office, 311, city departments, our