longer which is a good thing, but they must often survive and to work longer and retire later in life due to decreasing social security benefits and dismissing employee retirement benefits. the older adults and adults with disability population continues to grow. currently we compose of 25% of our city's population. by 2030 they will be grow to 30% of the city's population. and older adults over the age of 65 are the poorest in the city. and adults with disabilities have five times higher rates of unemployment than able-bodied individuals. over 25,000 of our city's seniors live below the poverty line on a monthly income of less

than $981 a month. so older adults and adults with disabilities provide diverse perspectives in the work force and many of them serve as mentors to young professionals and bring rich life experiences, knowledge, and skills to the team teams. and the subgroups and contribute greatly to our society and are willing to work, connecting them to the employers that are struggling to find good workers, make common sense representative of the city's values of caring for each other. we must fine a way to make sure our older adults and adults with disabilities have safety nets. that they have equal opportunity to job opportunities and a sustainable source of income. otherwise they are at greater risk of becoming homeless, more

food insecur and falling deeper into poverty. so you would like to thank marie and her team at the community living campaign for bringing this issue to my office's attention. i also want to thank the representatives today and look forward to the discussion and how the city can provide a more coordinated, robust, and targeted approach to provide greater workforce opportunities for our city's older adults and adults with disabilities. these are the people that will be presenting today, and i will name them all right now, and this will be the order they will be coming up. serena, the executive director of aging and adult services. portia from the department of human resources. catherine daniel from the office of economic and workforce development. and teresa wu from the california department of rehabilitation. so without anything further,

serene, would you like to come up and start presenting? nicole is going to start. okay. sorry, nicole. >> good morning. thank you so much for having us and this topic on the agenda today. i am nicole bond, the director of the mayor's office on disability. and i am going to just briefly introduce our topic, and a little bit about our framework. and then i will be coming back at the end of the presentation to talk about solutions and next accepts and to spend the bulk of the time focused on questions and public comment. i know there are many people interested in this today. and serene is going to be supplementing some of the data and statistics that supervisor yee mentioned in the introduction. and then we will be talking briefly about some of the city

programs and the public feedback we have received and the next steps we will be taking. >> thank you, nicole. >> good morning, supervisors. supervisor yee, thank you for calling this hearing. you stole a little built of my thunder as identifying yourself as one of the 25% and since 2000, the older adult population has grown by 26%. and citywide it was 9% and half

the population growth and the city's population has grown by 70,000 people and half of the that growth is in the adult population over 60. employment status of older adults and adults with disabilities in san francisco, drawing on the census status. is that the right chart? these charts represent the employment status of older ad t adults and adults with disability. om almost 3/4 of older adults are off the labor force. most who are in the labor force are embassy employed. and among adults with abilities under age 60, we see higher levels of workforce

participation with the higher rate of unemployment. what is important to member is when we are looking at this information, it does not capture discouraged workers which is individuals who may have left the labor force because they were unable to find employment. these are people who would like to find work, but are unable due to many factors. it is difficult to gauge the full extent of hidden unemployment or those marginally attached to the labor force. at a national level, the unemployment rate is about 4%. however, an alternative measure by the u.s. bureau of labor statistics suggests the unemployment rate is closer to 8% with the hidden unemployment and involuntary employment. >> quick question. the difference between unemployed an not in the labor force is? >> so people who are unemployed are in the labor force but waiting to be employed.

people not in the labor force are people who might be retired or discouraged from seeking work. or could be other reasons, but that is the difference generally. next slide, the u.s. department of labor tracks and projects employment trends by age. this chart presents -- represents the national data. for example, in 1994 about 1-10 seniors in the early 70s remained in the workforce. by 2024, department of labor projects almost 1/4 of the senior wills remain working. and there are many factors that drive this trend. and i think probably my colleagues will be talking a little bit about this as well with the trends are and in the factors driving it. and partover it is likely that people are generally healthier now. and so you hear 60s and -- well, you hear a lot of things. but one of the things is the 60s is the new middle age. people are generally healthier. medicine is advanced to better treat chronic health conditions, and we are living longer and healthier lives.

some of it is likely economic necessity, and i have talked to you all about that about how social security doesn't go as far as it used to go. and people have to -- and san francisco is so expensive to live and the issues you know about already, but work is meaningful for a lot of people, and that is what they prefer to do. i want to talk real quickly about the aging and adult services and at the end the department of human services as part of the h.s.a. one of the things i want to say to preface this is the department of aging and adult services has fairly nascent programs that are focused on unemployment. this isn't an area that we have traditionally worked in, but

there is not a lot of focus on older adult employment and we thought because we already work with older adults and with people with disabilities, we thought maybe it's time to try some new and innovative programming. and i think part of the reason we were able to do has to do with the dignity fund, too. so within our department, there are a handful of programs that support obtaining employment and are directly employ older people. and people with disabilities. and so the first program is reserve. that program is based on a national model is re-serve and is managed by the local campaign and job line. in this program, seniors and people with disabilities are connected to a part-time pay work opportunity at a local nonprofit or public sath agency. they are subsidized at a decreasing scale with the goal of the host agency eventually taking on the full cost of the re-service employment. in 17-18, we expect 100 clients will be served through this program. so far we have about 82 clients, so we're close to 100.

and this program is really small. the funding is only $250,000 per year, but it's able to serve 100 people. and senior companion, this program provides volunteer service opportunity and a small stipend for a limited number of low to moderate older persons to provide peer support and expand the capacity of local community-based sites to support higher need older adults. the volunteers provide support to other older adults such as assistance with chores and transportation to appointments. in 17-18, there will be 15 companions supporting up to 45 other seniors. the program within -- this program was funded at $85,000 per year. there is community liaisons, and these positions access seniors and people with disabilities and help them access a variety of services administered and currently they are placed at the dos benefit and resource hub. we spend about 52,000 on this

program. and then we have the support program which is janitorial and supplemental recycling. we contract with the arc of san francisco to provide janitorial recycling services to create employment opportunities for people with developmental and intellectual disabilities. this is funded about $100,000 per year. and i want to make sure to talk a little bit about the in home support services program and the independent providers that are employed by that program. most people are familiar with this program in home support services. we talk a lot about the need for home care. for client who is need help in their home. but a really important aspect of the program is the caregiver side. in total about 20,000 people working as independent providers or caregivers and ishss and this is essentially the third biggest employer in san francisco behind the city and ucfs.

and right now we have about 5200, approximately 5200 people who vieding services who are 60 or older. that is 26% of the provider pool. and we have about -- of those, 2,200 people are age 65 or older which is about 11% of the pool. so it's not unsubstantial this amount of older adults working in this program. and then just briefly, because i am not super knowledgeable about the department of human services side, but i do want to mention they have several workforce programs as well. and these are primarily tied to and funded in connection with other benefit programs and specifically calworks and the welfare to work. and given this connection, these workforce programs send to serve younger and more able bodies populations or what they call able-bodied populations. we are exploring opportunities to collaborate and we had a meeting last week and agency

wide meeting last week and will be meeting with supervisor yee to talk about maybe explore some of the ideas. and we do know that there are about 1,100 new job placements through the jobs now program. of those, only a small, small percentage, one%, were older adults. however, something that is notable is that the programs are potentially helping people in the later working years to obtain or regain employment. about 14% have jobs with new job placements were in their 50s. i think that conclude my portion. unless you have questions right now of me. >> no. that was a lot of good information. i will save questions for later. but certainly this is highlighting how little support the city gives to this population. thank you very much. >> thank you. >> i will turn it over to portia.

>> good morning. i am portia benton, the access to city employment recruiter for the department of human resources. today i'll be talking about one of the programs that we have as well for persons with disabilities which is called the access to city employment program also known as ace. ace is the city's alternative pathway program for people with disabilities. it allows for them to enter into city service without taking the civil service examination. and so how it works is d.h.r. has worked very hard in the past two years since i came on board as the designated recruiter to market the program and not only to the department but also to the community-based organizations as well. we have launched as of last year website for the program which is very detailed for the community listings and the process as well as how to apply for our positions. positions through the aid

program and because of the city's wide variety of positions, we actually define that as the first classification in a series or in a stand-alone so that includes the district nurses, recruiters, and anything that has no promotional ladder to consider entry level as well. and because of that we have over 200 entry level classifications and posted over 80 of them on the website. and they are on the continuous basis. and so job seeker cans apply at any time. the process is very simple. we have big support from the department of rehabilitation and they are the agency that provides our certification and goes through qualifying individuals who identify with the disability. we also have some -- we also have a description of the program again, as i already discussed. but within the past two year, we have really ramped up the

program a lot more than how it was before. and we had below not 10 appointments and within 2016 and with over 24 job seekers and that were eligible and many different classifications and admin, security, recreation, park, library page, so a large variety of different classifications. we also piloted a program in december. we noticed within the past two years we had a large applicant pool interested in the ace program. we see a need of opening up more classification and having positions that were part time. a lot of job seekers were only interested in part time and the ace positions focused and full time. because of that, we have a

partnership and how we have made that commitment as the departments reach out to me to provide a talented pool of candidates that have already been reviewed and directly find interviews and fill the vacancies. this gives job seekers a way for them to enter city service and get a feel of the position before they try it out and if they are interest and the department has permanent positions, they can choose move forward if they do so later on down the road. that is something very beneficial as well. and we have done a lot of marketing to the community-based organizations. we have some here today. to support the department of reh rehab, with the positive

resource and we have 675 community-based organizations that are aware of the program and provide me with candidates and we have grown that now to 14 departments and those do not include the police department, sfmta, and also our community and director of human resources in calling departments on a biweekly basis to introduce them to the program and find ways to collaborate and work together a lot more to fill vacancievacanc. >> can i ask a question? >> of course. >> more recently you had about 1200 ap i will plicants and now 24 appointments.

evidently there is a lot of interest. >> yes, there is. >> is there some -- what do you recommend to move forward to increase the number of appointments at this point with your program? >> i think that is a great question. what can we do a lot more of? i think a lot of it is the departments are limited because for the ace program when we first launched it, ace is only for entry level classification. many departments don't have permanent entry level classifications. we have launched a pilot program to serve that high talent pool that we have of candidates who are interested in only part time or only on call. we have been able to use the pilot to place them successfully in permanent positions to align them with the work they are able and want to do. because of that, more departments are opening out to be participating in the program because they are not limited for

hiring in the pilot practices. we hope it will grow over time and with the six placements that we have so far in the pilot. and many departments have reached out to me to fill positions, and the department of public health is meeting with me very soon to talk about ways to make this on a continuous basis. >> and the application form you ask the question whether or not you want full time, part time. >> yes. great question. and on the application process, applicants have supplemental questions and the first one is what appointment type are you interested in. that helps me filter applications out. and then we have a one on one conversation before i provide the department with the application. >> and you don't have to give it to me today, but next week, i guess, and can you just break down the 1200 and see who is looking for what. >> of course. >> of course. >> so here we wanted to really support.

>> i'm sorry. >> so do you actually have formal job share programs that would accommodate people who are looking for part-time work? >> i'm sorry. >> job share? >> one job is -- i see nicky coming. that's been a technique that people have used to come from and i come from the h.i.v. world and that is a technique to utilize and it can be difficult for someone with disability to work full time, and frankly, also far senior. i check both buckets, by the way. >> and to supplement what portia is doing an excellent job of describing, but to the point of job share, there is not a lot of job share for an economic reason and that is because our health benefits program requires full benefits at 20 hours per week. and so departments have an economic disincentive for having

a 50/50 split because they pay double benefits. some departments have maybe three and two, three days a week and two days a week option, but not 50/50. we don't have a lot of job sharing if that are reason. and the exempt program where people who, for example, that are front counter and pool and deal with staffing needs and then they come in and that is the kind of place where it's more part-time and probably a good choice for people who don't want to have full-time employment. and we are not experts in this, but i know that the department of rehab and other agencies are helping people deal with the fact that if you have full too much employment, you might lose benefits that you are entitled to from the federal government. i hope that touches the answer to the question. >> and benefit losses if you

work over 900 hours as a senior. and maybe -- i don't want to take up this committee with this, but maybe it's possible to have a longer discussion to look at how we might be able to be more flexible and to i allow more people part-time work. i have been talking about this for 20 years almost. the need for part-time work for people with disabilities and job sharing wi sharing with the best way to do that. >> we anticipated we want to move forward and we are meeting next week. those are the types of things we want to discuss and that would be a great idea to explore. >> thank you. go ahead please. >> thank you. this slide is something that we want to really congratulate the

departments and also thank them because the departments have put a lot of effort into not only working on what vacancies they have available, but making sure that we are providing the job takers that come in on board with the right materials and reasonable accommodations if they need it. again t big support is the san francisco library. we have department of public health and in the past year and a half that we have implemented. and rec and park and airport has done a lot of hiring through the pilot program which is amazing. and department of public works and d.h.r. has been amazing as well with hiring. and we have also had new departments such as the police department and sfmta as well, and as stated before, we contact on a biweekly basis to contact the departments and make sure they are aware.

as stated before, there is a lot more that we can do. and we are always, always willing to increase awareness and utilization of the program. so we plan to update and continue to make sure that the website is updated on a regular basis and the employment that we have available. we also are going to launch a testimonial webpage for the new employees who want to discuss how the program and the pilot has helped and assisted them. we want to continue our outreach with the community-based organization as well as the city departments. and in addition to that, we want to also explore other avenues for employment such as our pilot program and making sure there is anything else we can do to assist the community based organizations and the job seekers. d.h.r. will be happy to do so. with that, i will turn it to kathrin who will discuss other

services. thank you. >> good morning, supervisors. thank you for letting us present today. the office of economic and workforce development, the workforce system that we have structured is attempting to create an entire workforce specific system in the city that meets any job seeker where they are and moves them along this continuum towards economic vitality, and towards that we have programming that is focused on barrier mitigation and general job readiness as well as access points that are targeting either geographic areas or specific communities that have barriers and unique barriers to employment. so that we can really target our services to unemployment,

underemployment, and poverty. those services are really focused and career exploration and on connecting people to whatever job opportunity might be appropriate to them according to their individualized needs, and giving them resume and interview assistance, soft skills, and then finally, we move towards sector employment. we target the biggest industries in san francisco, and offer programming that allowing people to connect to technical skills that will allow them to committee in what is a very competitive city. as well as we're piloting this year transitional employment within our young adult portfolio to really put people's mind at career opportunities. and so that is just to give you an opportunity to whoa they are structured. >> we don't have specific programming and all of the

providers are generally trying to reach out who is unclear and underemployed. we did do a data pool and last year 7% of our participants were 60 and older. this year through march 31, it's ticked up to 8.5%. i have also included most of the providers if not all the providers do serve participants within this demographic and what we have listed is the providers that are sort of with the biggest concentration and the top five with the wiggest with the biggest concentration from last year and this year. we spoke with the providers and the gaps they are seeing and the services they need specific to this community, and what we really have seen is there is --

as far as what our providers are seeing, there is a confidence issue and there is also just really moving into a work econo economy, brushing up skills and making sure that you can compete and are familiar with the workforce in today's economy. so understanding and being able to connect to contract employment to really make sure they have robust marketing experience and skills development because of a whole lifetime where they have been creating careers for themselves, and making sure that they as they are seeking employment are confident and able to talk about that experience. and that we have workforce services that are focused on connecting people to mid and higher level opportunities where they can build off of what they have already developed through their lifetime within the older

worker community. as far as our -- we do have specific programming that is focused on adults with disabilities because this is a community and a demographic that faces specific and unique challenges to connecting to employment. again, all of our providers serve people with disabilities. what i have listed here are the three providers who make up the disability portfolio. disability portfolio.

>> to healthcare, substance abuse and some of the things that are preventing them from being able to connect to employment that falls somewhat outside of workforces, sort of pure workforce terrain. they need to be treated holistically if people are going to be successful and really moving up and along this continuum towards economic vitality. and i think we have several of our providers here also to talk a elect more about what they're

experience and they're seeing so unless you have questions i'll hand things over to the state to talk about it. >> do you know, in regards to oewd's budget, total budget and how much they actually spent for these catagories? >> the portfolio provided, that specifically focuses on disability make up $700,000. >> which is what percent? what's the total? >> our total contract budget is approximately $15 million. >> $15 million? and you said 700,000. >> 700,000 for the providers specifically focused on people with disabilities. the general workforce services, again, they serve everybody but the specific focus disability portfolio is about 700,000, yes.

>> same question for the other category of just older adults. 55 and older let's say. >> because we don't have programming that is specifically targeted. i mean our neighborhood access points -- i mean, if we -- so the providers that serve sort of in the greatest concentration. our older workers includes self-help for the elderly which is a neighborhood access point and offers sector programming. good will, and faces are all unable access points. our neighborhood access points tend to get a significant amount of funding but they offer services to the entire neighborhood and so it's hard to sort of stress out. >> i believe that the department of labor allows for funding for

older workers that are 55 and plus. is that something we do? i believe they allow 3% of the budget to be set aside. >> we get workforce innovation and opportunity from the department of labor. i can look into that but right now, we do not exclusively set aside 3% of our funding for older workers. i can see if i can crunch the numbers and follow-up with this group as to if we can give you a better sense of how much sort of funding would be going towards this group. because it makes up eight and a half percent of our total enrollment, i would expect that it's probably an equivalent amount of resources. i can try to give you more specifics around that. >> you can do that later.

>> thank you, next. >> welcome from the state of california. >> thank you. >> i'm from the district administrator of the department of rehabilitation here in san francisco. we're just across the street. to give you a little local perspective, even though we are a state agency, again, we serve individuals with disabilities who want to go to work or are under employed and help people increase their independent living. here in san francisco, we have cases sometimes for several years because we may help someone to go back to school or may take them a little time to find a job or they need some support services. generally speaking, every year we serve 2500 individuals. so some of them are with us for years, some of them could be with us for five years. it's a rolling number.

we place many people throughout the year but we can't assess if they're successfully working for 90 days or more. every year on average, we place for 90 days or more, 350 san franciscans with disabilities in employment. i was asked how long does it take for someone to find a job once they get training and get built up to go back to work. on average it takes six to 12 months for someone to find a job. as you can imagine, there are extreme cases that take longer because maybe they're in a specialized field or maybe they have multiple barriers to employment and we need to spend more time to help someone be able to compete and interview. we serve individuals anywhere from the ages of 16 until they no longer want to work. we do have a lot of youth we

work for and folks that apply in their 60s and 70s. on average the bulk are in their 40s and 50s. i want to highlight, first of all, our youth services programs for individuals who are ages of 16 to 21 and under the workforce innovation and opportunity act, we are required to spend 15% of our budget for every state on youth with disabilities ages 16 to 21. and we just kicked off in april here in san francisco. we are now in all 85 public and private schools. we are reaching out to them and we're providing the following services to young people with the hope that early intervention

will help a individual with disability to get on the road to employment and education sooner. so they'll have successful career and not join the roles of unemployment. so the areas we're focusing on is working with young folks on job exploration counseling, find out what they want to do and help them explore different careers and what it takes to get into those careers. we're doing work-based learning experiences where we are working on funding them to get their first job. so they get training. 100 hours of training in a job getting paid. we are also doing postsecondary counseling so if people who want to go in fields that do require education in college, helping them to find the schools, how to apply for schools, how to apply for financial aid. we're also doing work-place readiness training. and this is helping individuals to work on their soft skills, to

help build them up, to learn about what it's like in the world of work. we may take them on work-place tours and help them learn about different industries. we're helping young folks and not necessarily totally be dependent on their family but how to have the skills to advocate for themselves. >> you described a great program. is that what you -- is that similar to how you would approach the older adults? >> so i was jut going to go into that. this is just an emphasis on the youth. we do provide all this for the older adults also. the difference is for the youth, we're providing these services they do need not to apply for department of rehabilitation services. we are going into the schools and we're doing this for everybody else which can include youth. they can apply for vocational

rehab services and we provide, in addition to those services, several services we pay for such as pay for their training. if they don't qualify for financial aid that's a very popular one. obviously they come to us because they need help finding a job. when we work with youth that have not applied for services, we're getting them on the road of employment but we are not necessarily finding them the job when they graduate from high school but we can help them with that if they need that assistance after they graduate. we also provide job coaching. so for individuals who once we help them find the job if they have difficulties learning the job or need more assistance in what their manager can provide them in training we have someone that comes in and work with them either on site or off site so they can keep their jobs. we also provide assisted technology as people need that to go to work or to participate

in schools. there's several services. this is a small list. everything is individualized in terms of what the individual needs to go to work. any questions? >> yeah. how closely do you work with our city's ace program? it's just a great overlap of who you are serving. >> so we're in partnership with them. i have a staff person who does the certification and trains all my staff to do certification. also, when we have openings, every week we get openings for the ace program. we get it out to all of our staff as well as to our community partners to seek qualified applicants and we have to certified that they have a disability so they can qualify for the program.

>> i really appreciate that. thank you for being part of this. it's not usual we have the state department come in our city hearings. >> thank you. >> are there any questions? they can come back and give us solutions. >> good morning. i know you don't. i know you don't. i'm going to talk about just for a few minutes and we want to focus on questions and more public comments. some of the feedback that the mayor's office on disability has received around some of the city's employment efforts and some of the barriers that we've heard expressed and many have been already mentioned this morning but it's worth highlighting again. our mayor's disability council has formally written a letter of

recommendation to our colleagues in human resources in response to very thorough presentation on the ace program that is similar to the one we heard today that more needs to be done city wide for employment for people with disabilities. one of the perceptions we need to continue to work on is that through the ace program that there may not be opportunities for forward advancement and that i think can play into whether or not someone choses to follow through with the ace program or not. so that is definitely a piece of feedback. another challenge that we have is that from our sense in mayor's office in disability, we have a good sense of where people are who are already connected to a city program. we do have as good of a sense in terms of what the city wide need is for those individuals with disabilities and older adults who are not connected through one of our city programs, that

already are receiving services. there's a gap with some data missing there, which provides challenge in terms of really trying to figure out how to best address this truly city wide for those folks who, again, may not be aware a program is available or are just kind of out there and not connected yet. then we have also received public feedback. right now this feedback is anecdotal. we haven't done a formal survey on this. some of the things we've heard overtime is that one of the barriers that keeps folks from a fly for jobs is that many reasonable accommodation processes and application processes to apply for are either -- they feel they're complicated or for technical reasons are physically not accessible to people with disabilities. we hear this especially from our vision constituents.

also, we hear often that there is a fear that is out there that is directly linked to ableism and ageism that hearing of hiring discrimination keeps people from seeking employment. so there's a lot of education and training that we node to do about that and finally as we've mentioned previously, we also hear that folks are unclear how to access benefits and programs that allow for either full time work or part-time work and the the maintenance of benefits that feels confusing to a lot of people and then i folks that are unclear about how to navigate the system. in response to some of these things, we do have the aging and disability task force and right now we're in the implementation

phase. the aging and disability task force is on the world heath organization that is looking at eight different domains. one of the domains we've identified is employment and economic security. and just in january of this year, we began the implementation phase after a year of working with our city partners and non profits and business partners around what are the issues that are facing the aging and disability community. so on this slide, we're talking about what are some of the goals that the task force has recommended in this first phase to really look at in terms of economic and employment security. one is to ensure that we have policies and practices that meet the needs of older adults and people with disabilities and caregivers. we want to support those efforts. i should say too the goals are

set for the next three years but the actions that we're taking are changed and adjusted depending on needs and feedback. and so on the second goal we've identified for this first phase is to really start to look at ableism and ageism within the employment process and are we as a city really -- do we have a representative workforce. san francisco's demographics is specifically for people with disabilities and older adults and we also know that we have some work to do in terms of employer and employee training on working towards helping people under what ableism even is and ageism as well. and then finally the third goal is to really look at our efforts that are currently supporting economic security for seniors and people with disabilities and

their caregivers. this is getting to really looking at what are we doing in terms of benefits, counseling and is it effective. it's an action of this goal is looking eligibility and counseling and the effectiveness of the particular program and looking forward to continuing to work through the aging disability from a task force. that task force is chaired by myself and we really need to make sure we're identifying our stakeholders and collaborating and providing outreach to the community so the members of our disability. public who are not already connected to some sort of

program or in the loop in terms of what is available and i think we have untapped resources in the unified school districts and there are a lot of employees with disabilities in the system that are really looking for opportunities and we want to continue obviously to work with our disability in older adult non-profit advocates and service providers and we also have opportunities within the corporation and the business sector to really build. i think we really need a framework to bring everybody together though. that would be helpful to get everybody around the table and

effort and really. i'll turn it over. >> i think why don't we go to public comments. there's been people waiting here for a long time. the presentations were excellent. i'll sum it up later. >> yes, so i'm ready to -- i'm opening public comment and i have a card from fiona hinsy. from amy yu. i'm not reading these right. edith yaminoa. kathy spence ly, alisha crawford and rebeca shotwell to start. you can lineup on the left.

>> good afternoon, supervisors. i'm here to tell you a little bit our program. which name is amy yu. i'm the district or for the service employment program. it is a federally funded program, training program for the older adults 55 years and older and low income and residing in san francisco. we have the national council on aging and we're operated by sub projects throughout the united states. the goal of the program really is to foster individual economic self-sufficient see and increase the older benefits that benefit from unsubsidized employment and it's a training program to help upgrade job skills for older adult today's help them get job placements, to help older adults get involved in the community and to provide a community

service and to provide added income as well. it does really play an important role in today's competitive job market. our trainees are in the program for 48 months. it's the time they can be in the program. they are placed in non-profit and governmental agencies for part-time 12 hours per week. while they're getting paid a minimum wage stipend. the trainees are able to gain the skills needed with the goal of traps i transitioning to und employment and we help them find employment as soon as possible so the slots can open up for other older adults that can benefits from the program. and so at this time, we are recruiting actively for trainees as well as in our program and we are trying to acquire more host

agency sites. and we are actually having some durationing out. >> mr. yu. are you part of this group that's been meeting on this issue? >> no, not yet. so i do want to speak with a lot of the folks in this room today just to partner up with them as well. >> thank you. >> thank you. >> if people are ok, if people with disabilities can cut to the head of the line if that is helpful. >> thank you, very much.

so good afternoon, everyone, my name is anne and i'm the transition program specialist at the light house for the blind and visually impaired in san francisco. people with disabilities are often invisible and are last on the diversity and inclusion train so i'm really heart end to hear and happy we're hosting a hearing to discuss employment opportunities for individuals with disabilities. as someone who works from both the macro systemic level, serving on the department of rehabilitation committee and someone that studies this issue and working at the micro level, working specifically at the light house with young adults with disabilities, i witnessed a lot of the detrimental impacts of unemployment for people with disabilities and how this can really impact their self-esteem and economic empowerment. so according to the u.s. department of health and human services in 2016, employment rates for adults with disabilities and adults without is 35.9 compared to 76.6% so

that is nearly doubled. that's very disheartening. and we all know that unemployment is highly correlated with poverty, lack of economic sufficiency and low quality of life. i wanted to highlight three challenges people with disabilities face as they seek employment. so, the first is the awareness and hesitation of employer to hire people with disabilities because of fear of accommodation, if you are an older adult and you reenter the workforce you may need rehab training. the employer may say there's a gap in the resume. second is job exploration and support. lack of internships, mentor ships and there's a lot of room for ace program and others to work with community organizations to really develop those partnerships like the light house. the third is quality of work and employment so a lot of people with disabilities are tracked into lower wage jobs, so they have to weigh is it worth

sacrificing my benefits to make this meager wage. so i know the federal and local governments are really trying to be the model employer but i would encourage partnerships with businesses as well because the federal can't hire everybody. thank you very much and i hope to discuss further. >> thank you. >> next speaker, please. >> good afternoon, my name is edith. azzam'as amy mentioned i'm a for trainee of the service community employment program. i wanted to mention it has really changed the course of my life. i am here to state that we need programs like this to help seniors remain self-sufficient and independent in the city. i had been un'em employed for eight years, despite having a college degree and years of professional experience in the corporate sector.

yet i was lost and i could not find my way into the workforce. participating in this program gave me the confidence, self-worth and the connection i needed to be become employed. i had to be in the workplace to prove my skills. given the chance i did everything in my power to be useful, completing my tasks, always asking myself what more can i do. how can i create value? i am happy to say i have been hired full time as a program manager at the fellton family service agency. i love my job and appreciate my management for giving me the opportunity. to express my gratitude i want to make a difference in the lives of seniors and the community at large. that is what brings me here today. i would like to ask the supervisors to consider employment when highering seniors with the city and county of san francisco and increase support for work training programs like reserve and the

senior community service employment services program. thank you. >> next speaker, please. >> good afternoon. my name is kathy spencely. i'm from felt ton institute also known as family service agency of san francisco. our agency has been supporting san francisco safety net for 129 years. we serve older adult who's is worked to build and support san francisco their whole lives. many enrolled and social services or jobs and not come with large salary pensions and with the commitment to san francisco in the community in which we live. they may have saved bought a house in the city affordable and upon retiring, or loosing their jobs, many cannot meet ends to remain living here and out of poverty. they want to work, they need to work, part-time work is often what they seek they want to be part of the community to keep mentally sharp and find meaning.

perhaps most importantly, today they need to retool. to learn more computer skills and other skills to fit the need of today's job markets. fellton has managed the service management program since 2010 under contract with the u.s. department of labor and the national council on aging. this program provides formal training and training placements in city departments to get that on the job experience, job readiness and confidence. this program retools skills that importantly it gives c.b.o.s and city departments an opportunity to see the value of older workers. we understand this as well. over the past eight years we have hired 20 former participants to work in our agency such as edith. we need these programs so more older adults can find meaningful and necessary employment in san francisco. we rely on federal funding, which was cut in half six years ago. please consider increasing these programs so the city can benefit

from the expertise and inclusion in our workforce and community of older adults. thank you. >> thank you. >> next speaker, please. could i also call up judy goddis, marie jobling and winnie yu. come on up. thank you. >> good afternoon. i'm alisha crawford. the san francisco reserve program matches older adults and adulted with disabilities with non-profit employment and other sectors government agencies. we are in our second year of the program. it's housed in the community living campaign and we've placed over 35 adults in meaningful employment helping to build the capacity of these non-profit organizations here in san