to shape the city's future. - thank you for considering a career with the city and county of san francisco. >> they tend to come up here and drive right up to the vehicle and in and out of their car and into the victim's vehicle, i would say from 10-15 seconds is all it takes to break into a car and they're gone. yeah, we get a lot of break-ins in the area. we try to -- >> i just want to say goodbye. thank you. >> sometimes that's all it takes. >> i never leave anything in my car. >> we let them know there's been a lot of vehicle break-ins in this area specifically, they

target this area, rental cars or vehicles with visible items. >> this is just warning about vehicle break-ins. take a look at it. >> if we can get them to take it with them, take it out of the cars, it helps. >> this is a joint hearing between the ageing and adult services and the dignity fund oversight committee, and i'll turn it over to bridget to call the roll.

[ roll call. ] >> thank you, bridget. all right. we'll -- before i turn it over to our -- to the ageing and adult services executive director i just want to give a plug to the incredible work that research and development associates have done to provide us with this material, but i'll turn it over to cheri mcspadden. >> so this is a joint hearing

of the commission and the oversight and advisory committee of the dignity fund to hear a presentation of the community needs assessment done by rda. i want to just say a couple things about this process. i think most of you know this, but just to remind everyone that this is a culmination of a pretty long process that essentially started in september and has culminated in the report that you have. this was a long process, but one of the things that we knew or realized again that it was a pretty tight timeline to get into all the work done. there was a lot of things that went into that included the 11 community forums, the focus groups, the survey, both paper and phone surveys, the minutes.

[ inaudible ] >> so today, i'll be talking for about 20 minutes. we'll be giving an overview of the project, giving the gaps analysis, the recommendations,

and then we should have time for discussion, so for the moment, we'll be holding all questions until the end. i wanted to -- a little bit of an overview of the project. for many of you that have been involved in this, you know as shereen mentioned, we've been really busy. for the last six months, we've been collecting a lot of information, and we couldn't have done this without the input from the daas staff and from all of the supervisor districts who helped us do the community forum so we're just really appreciative for all the help and partnership that we had in the process. we had two things that we really wanted to accomplish. one was we wanted to have a process that was rooted in robust data collection and a rigorous methodology while simultaneously having as much community engagement as we probably could.

we are try to get a lot of different types of data to bring together to triangulate to see where are the gaps in the system, where are the growth, and what is the opportunities. and all of this will go together to support the service and will aindication plan that will be happening in the next year. the key components for us, we started with a literature review and looked at existing needs assessments that have been done and also looked at other services of this type, other equity analysis. we used that to develop a data collection plan and analytic plan in connection with daas. then we had community forums and service and focus groups to hear from as many community members as we could. we uses program and census program, we looks at the gaps in the system when we brought everything together and then we finally used that to create our report that's currently up on the website.

so we used mixed methods to gather information and service experiences. we held -- first, we started around october with community forums in every district. the idea behind this was to have as many community members as possible across the city with a focus of having a lot of older adults and adults with disabilities attend. we worked with the supervisor districts and also community based organizations to distribute information about the forums widely. for example we had fliers that had every forum. we had interpreters in all of the threshold languages and some additional languages, and we made a point of having fliers so that people could widely see wherefore umms were, could find forums in their language, and could attend. i think we were fairly successful in having -- every forum had at least 50 people attend, and we had really robust survey.

we used a convenient survey. this mean that anyone could answer the survey, and we tried to get out people as much as possible, and we used that to hear from as many people as possible. we also had a cbo survey that was on-line, and we did look at analysis between the phone survey and the on-line paper

survey to see if there were noticeable differences between groups that might be lessen gauged in services versus people that are really connected. overall we didn't really see a lot of differences. then, we had an equity analysis. the goal of the equity analysis was to establish a baseline of dock service participation. so we used program data from daas as well as census data, and we looked at service usage much . so we looked at groups that we identified as having a equity factor, so these are groups that we feel might be at risk because they have low income, limited english proficiency, and we saw their usage was different than usage across all groups. we looked at usage by district and different service types. and all of this was to get a sense of where the different areas were that may or may not

it's because they don't need the services or don't want them or whether they're having access issues. we do know from our survey that most people who said they weren't accessing services did so because they did not need or want them. populations with equity factors, such as limited english proficiency or groups that live alone which might be a risk factor for isolation were more likely to access services, so this is a sign that people who might be in need of services might be reaching out and servicing them. one notable exception in terms of targeting is adults with

disabilities had lower utilization rates pretty much across all service types. as you can imagine, we had a lot of data. and so one of the ways we conceptualized our data was to use a framework that highlights factors that are vital for successful program implementation. service delivery, whether services are delivered across san francisco to meet the needs, inclusiveness and responsivity, culturally responsive and reflective of the diverse make up of the city. efficiency, whether resources are efficienty utilized to maximize impact, and collaboration, which is the extend that organizations and agencies work together to collaborate to maximize effective services.

in terms of accessibility, we saw overall high service usage rates, which indicates many have access to services. this was in our equity analysis. we saw there was varying awareness about the array of services? some services like centers for older adults, things you tended to see in your community, people were very likely to be aware of. we saw overall that there was higher use in districts where there was a lot of services available. in contrast, some services that provide information referral, were much less likely, compared to about 80% that new aboknew paratransit. consumers described the system as challenging to navigate, and. they're not aware of the adrc's and other services that might be able to help them, like

service hubs. we found there was a lot of confusion around eligiblity. they found eligibility as a barrier, and they oftentimes thought they were ineligible for services where they thought they would be eligible? and overall there is a perception that san francisco demonstrate a lack of awareness of experiences of the needs of older adults and adults with disabilities. in terms of service delivery across all services, we found that consumer rates services favorably when they were using them. successful services met basic needs, promoted community building and provided opportunities for learning. we did find that there was a need for additional support for caregivers? and we did also find that limitations and data create challenges in accessing service delivery. so for example, we only know who's accessing services if we have data to support that? so for example, we'll talk about a little bit later, there are areas where for example if

we don't have strong data on how many older adults are homeless and who are accessing services it's harder to find the gaps, so there are some areas that we have some blind spots because of data. in terms of inclusiveness and responsivity, existing services reflected the cultures of san francisco neighborhoods. many services that exist for older adults and adults with disabilities are culturally responsive to different neighborhoods and reflective to the ethnic diversity across all neighborhoods. we also found that consumers are limited or no english proficiency face some barriers. so what we saw there are some services that they're accessing a lot and there are others that they're not accessing very much at all, so there might be some bare residence to some specific services. we also found that barriers exist for caregivers as well as

consumers. we found that consumers subscribe inefficiency when trying to access benefit services? some of this might have come from confusion where consumers cited extensive amounts of paperwork required while enrolling in programming like cal fresh. we believe that sometimes the perceptions of inefficiency or perceptions of burdens of paper might lead people not to being assess services? we also looked at the average financial benefit? so for people that were getting services in different districts, we looked ad what was the average amount of money that was spent on each person in a district. and what we found was it didn't always align with what we'd perceive as a level of need, so there are some districts where there are a large share of older adults who were low income that are accessing services, but their average financial benefit or the average amount that's being spent on those services was a

lot lower? we don't see this as a problem necessarily? it's actually just something we would want to dig into. one possibility which seems likely, differegiven the data have a lot of people in certain districts that are accessing those lighter-type services? one of the things we'd want to look into further is is this a model efficiency or are people actually receiving the services, so we're not exactly sure what that finding means, except that it's an area to dig a little bit deeper. also, just in terms of collaboration, the need for collaboration at neighborhood and districts and then we heard from people they really just want to continue to collaborate efforts across city agencies especially thinking how do you colocate services for older adults that also might need help with substance abuse or mental health, so really just thinking how you maximize

colocation and continue efforts to collaborate. so in terms of accessibility, we recommend examining opportunities to raise overall awareness in the community. we also look at considering ways to increase awareness of existing services and reducing the burden of navigation? so this can be both making sure that people know about some of the services like adrc's or other information or referral hubs so they can access that as well as thinking about possible solutions for making it easier to navigate the system. one example that came up a lot was considering a pier navigator program that utilizes trained consumers to be ambassadors for service navigation? in terms of service delivery, thinking about expanding opportunities for community building, social interaction, multicultural and intergenerational interaction.

as you recall, people felt very happy of services they were engaged in. and it was just about expanding services, and expanding services to caregivers. one of the challenges and limitations in doing something that was so short -- such a short timeline was many of the people we reached were service engaged? i think one of the things that might be useful to think about in the future is how do you really reach out to communities that might be not engaged in services and find out what they need. we'd like to think about ways to expand outreach efforts fore adults with disabilities. specifically, we saw that rth at thatted outreach for younger adults that may be aware of programs but not aware if they're welcome to go, for example to a senior center or if they're -- the services are not meeting their needs.

looking at digging a little bit deeper into equity factors, as i mentioned before overall, we saw that populations with equity factors tended to have higher participation but really digging at a service level and saying there are some areas where that may not be true? and then thinking about additional analysis to identify possible disparities. so this is digging deeper into specifically racial and ethnic groups. we had a lot of missing data on lgbtq before our data came before the city's ordinance, so one recommendation would be to look after the city's ordinance and we'll have better data and look at service participation. and how do you reach isolated individuals and communities that aren't engaged in services. so one of the things we talked about is having community navigators and pieer researches that reach out and do surveys for people that may not in any way be connected to services.

as i mentioned before, just big digging in a little bit deeper into on you adrc participation affecting overall services, whether there is a relationship service model and then also just looking at some districts had higher and lower participation, and just seeing at what are some of the district differences and looking for are there certain models for working really well? continuing collaboration with city departments. daas is really already engaged in a lot of collaborative efforts, but just thinking about how you can continue to increase that and colocate that where the adults with disabilities and adults in need of services really are, and then there was a call for intergenerational and multicull right lane programs. that was something that people really enjoy. so the next steps are the daas commission input on may, and then, the final needs assessment will be in june.

after that we'll start a planning process to form a service allocation plan. >> all right. thank you very much. so i believe we will move onto questions and comments from the daas commissioners, and then, again, to comments and questions from the advisory over sight committee. and these will be bifurcated in terms of the agenda? we're not all just going to fire questions at the same time? >> yeah, you can -- >> okay. we'll all do it together. thank you. any immediate questions or comments? >> well, i'd like to take the opportunity as chair of the oversight and advisory committee to introduce ashley macumber who has an important role around this whole process and was responsible for getting

the community forums and surveys and those kinds of things distributed, so ashley, thank you. >> hi. >> hi. >> my question is when you talk in terms of the equity analysis and language barriers, what services have the barriers? i mean, were we able to identify that? >> yeah. [ inaudible ] >> 'cause that would be important to know as to what services are being -- >> are you asking, based on language? >> yeah. >> so we -- >> look at the equity analysis, and they talk to -- that a lot of -- a lot of services are being heavily used by -- >> yeah -- >> -- but some are not.

>> so one of the equity factors that we looked at was limited or no english speaking proficiency. and what we found was groups with this equity factor were much more likely to engage in adrc transportation, kocongreg meals. they were less likely to collaborate in community fund, village and home delivered meals. i also -- i don't have the specifics, but we did have some indication that there might be language barriers for caregivers. so i think it's more that when you see that there's some areas where people with limited english proficiency are accessing services much more and there are other areas that are less, i would want to know for those services, did they not know about them, are they not provided in a way this's meeting their needs?

>> okay. [ inaudible ] >> when you do the phone survey, how do you select the people, one, and are they all across, like, on different minority groups, and do you have bilingual staff to ask these questions, etcetera. >> this is for the phone survey? yes. so one of the reasons that we contracted with davis research is that they're an agency that specifically does phone surveys? what they did was they consulted with us and amy, if you have anything to add, please jump in. we consulted with them. we gave them information on -- we wanted to have a representation of adults -- older adults and adults with disabilities ideally. they bought a list for each, and they wanted to make sure there was some representation. we had -- we offered the survey in all of the threshold languages, and they had interpreters on staff to provide that survey for anyone that spoke non-english. they did actually -- i don't

know off the top of my head initially, but we did receive a number of phone surveys in languages other than english, and we did try to get a cross sample of older adults in the city. we did have a challenge reaching adults with disabilities, so that was one limitation of the phone survey? >> yeah, that's the question i'm asking, 'cause you know the needs of the minority group may not be the same as, so if you only have a small group then it's not really a very good representation across the board of the needs of different ethnic groups, etcetera. >> so we did -- we did try to have a representative group in the phone survey. we also tried -- that's part of the reason why we also did a convenient survey because we did have a lot of representation. in general we had a lot of diverse responses across all of the surveys. i think the larger challenge we faced was how do you reach out to people who have no ssts

connection, -- service connection, so i think the way to reach out to people in their homes that have no idea that services existed. that was a challenge we had, so again, thinking about building off this in the future, do you have people that are already part of those communities that can visit people in person, or thinking ways to kind of expand across the phone survey to get more information. >> do you keep a copy of the survey? >> yeah. we actually -- >> can you provide a copy? i'm interested to see the copy. >> yes. we have a copy of the survey, which i think is in the ap appendix. >> i'm talking about the phone survey. >> okay. yeah. >> that we -- the results of the phone survey, particularly. >> mm-hmm. >> okay. thank you. >> sure. >> first hi. i want to thank you for your work. i know you had a very short timeline and considering that,

you did an amazing job. however, i have some questions about the data collected on lgbtq folks, and just how useful is it, the data that you collected, and if it's useful, what is it saying? >> so it's hard for us to make a -- we want missing data for lgbtq for about 40% of people. as you mentioned, this was before the soji ordinance, so i would take any findings from this needs assessment to really inform the future. we found that across the board given that there was lower participation for lgbtq compared to other groups, it's really hard to know if you're missing 40% of data what to make of that. i think that one important thing is to -- >> so are you saying there is lower participation? >> we saw lower participation in the equity analysis, and we have some reason from the qualitative data to think there

may belower service participation. i think we should be thinking about how do we use the equity analysis as a baseline? so as you stated, we expect daas to go back and redo the methodology. over the next year, i think one of the areas to dig into more is are there challenges around participation for lgbtq and then looking back over years after the ordinance to see whether we have better data if that changes. >> so if we are looking at the spread of the amount of individuals, lgbtq, old using certain types of services and daas funded transportation, food pantry, groceries, 50% less participation, and then, in terms of times more, only being lgbtq specific programs, that's mostly based on the discrepancy -- the gap in the data? >> it's hard -- it's very hard to make any definitive -- what we see could be troubling and what we heard in terms of the

qualitative data is that there are people that may not be using services as much, but it's very hard to know, for example, you mentioned that across all the services, the participation rate's lower except for services that were specific to lgbtq. it's really hard to know how much of that is a data issue? were services collecting a lot better data? so i think at this point it's an area we should continue to watch and dig in deeper, but i think whenever you're missing that much data, it's certainly an area for further exploration. >> but certainly it's a significant decrease in the outizati utilization of nonlgbt services. it's traumatic, trying to understand it could be the data or it could be a combination of the data and not utilizing

mainstream ageing services. >> i think it's an area for further exploration, absolutely, and i devly think it's something that should be repeated after we have more data, but i do think there's reason to consider to look into it deeper. >> i would ask shereen to comment what the department might be doing in the shorter time frame around marcy's question. >> i think there's an opportunity for us not to wait for four years to relook at the data, if that helps. >> thank you. >> okay. >> ready? first of all, thank you for your hard work, 'cause i know here again, you had a short time frame. i do want to thank members of the service providers work group for their work and their help in helping producing more on focus groups and concentrating on different populations. thank you for all the service providers group -- work group. it's glaring in this report that the issue of outreach is such a key factor, and i think

we need to look at inno vatetive ways to utilize outreach in a way that's more effective. the fact that people don't know that there's a department of ageing and adult services alarms me, and i do think we have to think of different ways to outreach, so not just the same old, same old. >> can i ad two points to that, as well. one being, were you able to make inferences on current programs that if there was more of a focus on marketing and outreach, in terms of how funding is spend perprogram, that that would be the way to do it? >> we didn't do that in this. i think that's a really good thought in terms of thinking about what's the bill -- we were able to look at -- especially in terms of the survey, whether there are some programs that people are more or less aware of? it might be an interesting next step to see -- what we noticed is services -- people tend to be aware of services that they

see around them. people tend to use services if you live in district three that has a lot of services, you tend to use them more. so i think it's important to -- and we also noted services like paratransit and people in senior centers knew about more? i think it would be an important thing to take the next step to see were people are more aware of certain services than others. i think it would be important to know why people don't know as much about daas services or the adrc's and how to get the word out there more. >> i guess from a practical standpoint if you're looking at a contract for a specific type of service with a specific service provider, is it that they are strapped for funding and most of the fundings is going towards staff and the program allocation -- the program services itself, and then there's -- it's kind of marketing and visibilities and after thought, and what --

>> so we didn't dig into information about how programs advertise? i think we would recommend that across programs but having a visibility, once thing we heard a lot was that people would ask, if only i had a hub or i go to my older adult center, but depending where i go or depending who's at the desk, we have varying levels of information? we wish there was some hub, and those hubs exist, so i think it's thinking about what's a concerted effort to get people to the places and thinking about -- and how do you have one coordinated campaign rather than relying on an individual older adult center to get the word out there. >> okay. in terms of the outreach, i think it's fascinating, though, that for -- that low income people in the city access these services at a much greater rate than nonlow income, and it might mean that because the nonlow income don't need the

services as much. we sort of don't know why that access is like that, except i would, you know, surmise that a lot of that could be that they might know about them, but you know, they're not -- they're not relevant in the sense, so i think it's good that if you look at the demographics of this, that the department is reaching that population. [ inaudible ] >> there's no way for us to know if there are people that are not accessing services because they don't know about them and would want them,

versus they know about them and don't need them. >> we'll go to commissioner language and then o.c. memorier adelman. >> sure. i have a couple concerns around outreach and the sort of the number of people we reach in the survey. so for example, when i think about district ten, i think there is a disproportionate number of people in that district who are steeped in poverty. however, when i look at the data around accessibility, i don't see a significant up tick of the number of people in ten utilizing services. could you shed some light on why that might be? >> so are you speaking about the equity analysis in terms of the service participation? >> i am. >> i think that -- i think for all of the district analysis one of the recommendations we have is that we should see where -- where is -- where there are things that we see that we defined as problematic. so one of the things that we

chose to do as researchers is we're presenting the data but we're not prioritizing what are the focus areas? i think that as part of the planning process, i think it's really important to highlight if there's something that's troubling around a certain district and having lower participation than you'd expect, i think that's an area where one of the recommendations we had was to dig a little bit deeper into the equity analysis and think about, like, are there reasons for that, would we expect that to be higher than it is? so i would just say if there's areas that highlight further exploration, that's something we'd expect. we realize this is kind of a first step. >> well actually, i understand. and one of the first things that you noted was you talked about service utilizations in outer districts. you mentioned one, two, four, and 11. that's why it came up for me. so i'm still trying to get a better handle on why district ten wasn't highlighted to do a deeper dive? >> i think that we would recommend that the department

works collaboratively to think about the areas where they want to prioritize, both digging deeper into the data as well as just kind of focusing on. what we have is a lot of needs and a lot of data, and at this point we would need people that are experts in the area to find out where you focus effort. >> actually, i think i understand. i think the only thing i want to add to that is the combination of poverty and chronic disease should be factored in when we're looking or doing a deeper dive into these districts, and i think it would be highlight perhaps bayview and the tenderloin in a different way. >> thank you. >> sure. >> just seems to me that in a lot of the studies that the department does and is that we're kind of reaching the same people over and over again, and that concerns me going forward.

i understand why we've been doing it, but i think we've -- i've heard these recommendations before. i was on the lgbt ageing policy task force, and we had to do a very hurry up study on the lgbt community, and we had a lot of problems doing that, as well, so i'm certainly sympathetic, but it certainly raises the issue that we really need to have deeper -- deeper studies that really focus on the issues that we already know that come up in all these studies over and over again, especially around outreach, especially outreach to certain communities and certain districts, and that it's focused on that, and rather maybe not be a part of a larger study where it's not prioritized in the study. so just a general comment on any future studies that -- that they focus in that way. >> can i add to that, as well.

from again, kind of a tactical implementation in the study, going forward to see what we can do better, in terms of departmental collaboration with other agencies in san francisco, that have multiple touch points with residents across the board for a variety of different reasons, are there -- are there ways that we can look at having joint hearings with rec and parks and department of building inspections and you name it who have multiple other types of touches with residents so that they are knowing -- so that they know what type of data to collect, they are thinking about things from a senior-disabilities perspective lens? wonder iffi wondering if there's a way to convene those different stakeholders. >> yes, i'll answer that. yes, that is something we could look into certainly. we have relationships with those other departments and have been meeting with them. i think the question that i heard was about outreach and

how we do outreach. and i think one of the issues that this brings up quite well is that we need to spend some time and effort and resources on outreach beyond what we're doing. and i think one of the things -- and this actually really helps us do that. one of the things that we haven't had a really big budget for is outreach. it gives us some -- it certainly says there's a need for us to do this. there's a need for us to do effort into outreach, what kind of will work best, and i think that will really help. it's just something we haven't had a budget for, we haven't been able to do that. i think we can use some dignity fund dollars to build a campaign and reach out to communities that are using our services at as high a rate, so -- >> thank you. >> there was also the data around people thinking that

there's not a sensitivity to ageing and disabilities. so if we thought about an educational campaign that heightens that awareness, does that expand our gatekeepers? if people know about that, will they have access to folks that are not currently service engaged? so does that expand the outreach as a by-product of education? >> i think there are two pieces. one is around just an overall awareness, so one of the things that we heard about a lot is if you're taking muni, you're taking public transportation, really having an awareness of the needs of adults with disabilities and older adults, so overall having a campaign of awareness to older people's needs, but another thing that was brought up was not just reaching out to eld onner adults, but reaching out to

their caregivers, and their families, so reaching out to the services that are available will help them get more connected even if they have other people that are supporting them in those connections. >> you know, i think the whole issue of ageism is really in the forefront now. and even though here in san francisco city and county, we have 25% of the population are over 60, it -- the awareness of ageing is still not visible. and i think one of the issues that i've noticed lately is the other departments are becoming a little bit more aware of our department, of ageing and adult services, which is great because there could be more collaboration among departments because there's so many times where people are working in silos. and i know we on oac really support the idea of collaboration with departments. so i think the -- our department being visible and our leadership being visible,

this is all good. and i think we could -- we need to continue to do that citywide because even like one of the things that we're going to be doing is trying to have a dialogue with all the different people who are running for leadership in this city. and the issues of ageing need to be elevated to the discussion level and the public. >> i had a questiofew question. when you were saying older adults that don't get services, they say they don't need or want them, was it broken-down among the people that do get started about, are they getting some but are they maybe waiting on others or are they getting what they need in the time that they want? >> the way that we did the survey was we asked by individual service areas, so we asked first, for a given service area, do you know about the service, and then for people that knew about them,

did you engage in the service, and if you didn't engage in the service, what were your reasons? so were there barriers, and one of the reasons was that you don't need a service. and so we have information for each across each service, so we tended to do things. one of the constraints in terms of our survey was we really wanted to utilize skip answers as much as possible, so if you answered one way, it would lead you down a path so it wasn't excessively long. i don't know if that answers your question. >> it does. can you say something about the other barriers that you have? >> yeah. so a lot of times -- [ inaudible ] >> can you please step up to the mic? and state your name, please. >> my name is amy cole. so as kira said, primarily folked answer, when they said no, i didn't use it, and they were given a list of survey

questions to respond to, primarily the majority of them said i didn't need it? and then less than 10% more or less would select other options. consistently across the board we heard eligibility, so i'm not eligible or i don't know if i'm eligible were selected for, i believe all of the services that people did list a barrier for, and then additionally access showed up for almost all of them -- i'm sorry, awareness. and then, different services, you would hear a few things around the staff culture doesn't match my background, but we heard that a little bit less. transportation was one. but again, it was consistently fewer than 10% of folks. >> can i ask a brief follow up just to expand on eligibility. so clearly in many different places throughout the study, confusion on eligibility, ineligibility came up. and does that mean that it's, again, kind of from a perception standpoint about navigating bureaucracy or is it that we actually need to take a

look at the different programs that are provided and rhea ses eligibility requirements? >> i think it's both. so there are some programs where there are eligibility requirements. community living fund is one of those, and we did see for example some groups with equity factors. i believe english language proficiency was one, so there's some groups that were less likely to participate in services that do have eligibility? and so there might be opportunities there where people actually that would qualify aren't getting to services. and so we did -- when we looked into the equity analysis, we took into account the eligibility? so i think there are ways to see if there are groups that might not be accessing services? i think that there are services where there was a need that people wanted maybe more, so i think digging into the services -- i think overall, we heard that there was confusion about eligibility, and we know that there are a number of services daas provides that have no eligibility criteria, and people might be overall not

aware of that. but then digging into some of the specific services around like the community living fund and areas with eligibility, are they using them less because they don't know about them, are they having problems with eblibility is worth digging into. >> sure. >> the next question i had we talked a lot about the challenges about finding young people for the study and outreach. i'm wondering about your perspective as researchers, and try to do a follow up to reach younger people with disabilities how you would figure out how to do that. >> if i would want to move forward from here, i would want to focus more on the ideas of using peers to do surveys, so training community members to reach out to their own communities. and i think it would be really exciting in what are the groups that we want to reach, and how do we train younger adults to go out? so could we get a few peers

that might be willing to go out and talk to their fellow peers and do a short survey or something like that. i think we would get that and i think that's true across a number of different populations? i think we'd be more likely to get at people that aren't engaged in services. >> that makes a lot of sense, although i'm also thinking about people within families who aren't connected with other people with disabilities, who don't go out a lot. i'm wondering if you have any ideas on that. and part of the challenge is with the phone surveys, that a lot of the companies don't tag that. >> we could certainly do -- the process with the phone survey is a resource issue. we could actually expand the phone survey and contract with davis research to do a much larger robust phone survey. they're able to focus on adults with disabilities, so that would be one possibility is they are able to do cell phone surveys, so i think there are ways to dig deeper into phone surveys. i think there are challenges with phone surveys that you

might be able to do other pgs ones. for example an intercept surveys if you're in an area where younger people with disabilities might be, you might be able to reach out to them and ask questions. i would think some sort of enhanced, doing the phone survey and going out in person, short-term of intercept surveys. >> you mentioned that the usage of the disabled people are two times less, okay? what are the reason or the barrier of them getting the service? did you find that out? i think that what we saw was all of the reasons we saw for everyone else, but maybe more exacerbated. so people not being aware of services. people see the name daas, and it doesn't specifically talk about adults with disabilities, so people may not be aware of the services that are available to them, or they may be aware of the services but feel that they're notindicatoring --

catering to younger adults with disabilities. >> well, maybe it's time to change the name, because the name definitely does not include the name younger people. it's the department of ageing and adult services. maybe we should say department of ageing and disabled adults, because sometimes when you go for service, okay, and you don't know what this is, but if the name, disabled adults, is there, people oh, this is for me. right now, it's really only for adults. >> if i should be so bold to acknowledge that that's something that i've also given thought to, gleaned from the findings on the fact that daas does not specify disabilities in terms of perception. >> that's correct.

the name is not clear, and we've talked a lot about that. there's a process we would need to go through to change the name, which we should probably talk about some more. i think the other thing that i wanted to point out is given the number of dollars that we have for services that specifically serve younger adults with disabilities, we don't quite have parity, so it's something to think about with dignity fund dollars as we move forward. >> so i just want to take a moment to ask again if any other oac and commission members have questions in light of the fact that we need to make some room for public comment, leave some time, as well. just the note that -- you're still rolling? >> i can wait. you go ahead. okay. i'll stop. >> go ahead, jessica. >> one of the things -- i hope this isn't a long question. in terms of -- i appreciate the reminder at the beginning the purpose of this is to remind next year's service and allocation plan, so i'm

wondering if there are any additional thoughts from daas or what this means for that. >> i mean, i think there are a couple of things, and one of them you've brought up yourself. i think we need to look at adults with disabilities and how we're looking at that population. i think that department of ageing and othertion as came together to makeup the department of adult services. the majority of dollars have always been focused on eld onner people. while we don't have the same numbers of younger people in san francisco with disabilities as we do older adults, we also don't -- we still don't have quite a parity for those -- for that population, and we need to think about that and how we serve that population best. i think that there are a lot of things that we can be proud of. the fact that we are serving

such a high population of people living in poverty i think is a really good thing. i think that we're -- you know, the equity -- number of people we're serving with equity factors is press impressive, as well. that made me feel good to know that we're doing that. what i think we really need to think about is, you know, we could do a deeper dive right now, but i think there's enough need out there that we're just going to have to sit down with the dollar that's we have if figure out the most equitiable way to serve. we're going to depend on the over sight committee to help us figure it out. it's a lot of money, and at the same time, it's not enough money to provide all the services that we wish to provide to the number of people we know need them. so i think we need to think about what our values ares aa department and as a city, whether we figure out what our needs are, whether they want to

focus on the most basic of needs, whether we want to think about what a full focus of service needs. there are a lot of questions we need to answer as a community, and this is going to give us the opportunity to do that and have those conversations. at the same time i don't think it's going to be easy, as easy in the past when we didn't have all the information, so i guess that's what i would say about all that. >> i would just say about the lgbtq data is one thing it does tell us for sure is that lgbtq elders and older adults are using organizations that are targeted to the lgbtq community, and those organizations that are especially lgbt welcoming. so with the lack of data that we have and we will have for sometime, we should think about putting resources in these organizations that are already

serving a majority of the lgbt older adults in the city as a way to make sure that resources are allocated to the lgbt community that come out of the dignity fund oversight committee, and the dignity fund and the work going forward. >> i think many of the observations that have been made are accurate and nightf , insightful, and i agree additional outreach is needed especially in these two targeted communities. an observation that i would offer as a member as well as having had families with disabilities and so forth, the buricracy's very difficult to navigate. the acronyms are impossible, even for somebody who's been living with those acronyms for

years and years, and to try to simplify our message would go a long way toward welcoming people to actually access our service or learn about our services. it's a very complicated web, not just the eligibility requirements but where they're located and whether it should be district wide or citywide. i think many people who have needs don't only look for those services within their supervisorory district. many people don't know where their boundaries are or don't care. to the extent we can deep policy particularize that, and try to reach the people who need our services in a more welcoming way would go a long way toward what this committee is attempting to do. >> good point. >> well, i certainly think there should be more outreach, and perhaps some simple ways to get outreach is just outreach to places that people use.

you could put book lets in common spaces, for example. you could reach social service agencies, for the institute on heath and ageing, jewish family agency, family services agency, they could all be portals, and you could train someone as well as have information in different languages available. something that's in new york city where i came from is to put adds on buses or in buses or street cars. the ads in the newspapers have for services all the time. an idea that came from bill haskell is to train librarians or have librarians portals for services -- or service information. that would require a little mormoning and training perhaps