>> president serina: good afternoon and welcome to the matinee addition on aging and adult services. will they please take the call of both? [roll call] >> at this time we ask that you silence all electronics. >> president serina: made a -- may i have a motion to approve the agenda? >> moved. >> president serina: thank you. all in favour? thank you. motion carried. may i have a motion to approve the june 20th, 2018 meeting minutes?

>> so moved. >> second. >> president serina: any comments or questions. >> can we note that we have another director here. >> president serina: thank you. ok. all in favour of approval of the minutes? >> president serina: thank you. motion carried. and now the director's report. >> good afternoon commissioners. i wanted to start off by talking about the representation of the national association of area agencies on aging aging, the meeting in july in chicago. we were fortunate to have 11 people there, people from the management team as well as people from the planning team representing which was great. it was really nice to be able to spread out and go to different workshops and bring back different information back to our team.

one of the things that we heard there that we continue to hear is that there is a lot of concern about what will happen in the federal budget in the next year. there's a lot of conversation about cutting the services that we work very hard to protect and we worry about a lot. there's also a lot of talk about the older americans act reauthorization and what the strategy around that should be with respect to getting it reauthorized. before those of you -- for those of you who are on the commission, you can remember that the act was just reauthorized a few years ago. it is already up again if i thought reauthorization. and it is really hard to think of it strategically what the best approach to that should be. is it time now to open up the conversation? or is it best to weight until the political situation looks a little bit more favourable to older people? so it will be interesting to see what happens with that i think we will be looking -- we will be

meeting the commission on the advisory council to weigh in and support the older americans act and the programs that are related to it in this next year, as we look at the budget. a lot of our programs continue to be at risk. that was one of the big takeaways from that meeting. in addition, we had a lot of chance to hear from other aaa's and they're related partners and hear about some really fantastic ideas. things that we could implement here. we had a follow-up meeting last week when we came back with our internal team to talk about some of the things that we might talk about implementing in san francisco. as usual, we often are reminded -- once again we are reminded we have great programs here and we have great support from having fantastic commissioners, to have a great advisory council members and really, you know, really

strong advocates in the community. that carries us if either then a lot of our colleagues are able to be carried. we certainly have a lot more money in this program than most people do. the california association of area agencies is having its annual board retreat in september and we will be focusing this year on a couple of different years. one is behavioural health and making sure that older adults are included in mental health services act programs. one is thinking about housing and trying to figure out if there is a partnership that we can have between the sea four a and the california directory to come up with a intentionally new housing legislation that helps support people staying at home safely.

at all so we are looking there at reframing aging as we are in san francisco. so that is exciting. it is my contribution to the board. to bring in people from frameworks to talk to the directors about to reframing the aging and how we might do some statewide campaigning around ageism. moving on to reframing aging, i am really excited that we have actually launched our reframing aging campaign work last week. commissioner wallenberg is involved in that group. it's exciting to have him and have the commission represented their. we are looking at building a two prong campaign. one to talk about reframing the aging in san francisco and combating ageism at able -ism, but also making sure that people really know how to access our services. as you remember we found out from the community assessment and also other places that people do not know how to access services often when they need them. so it is exciting to embark on this.

it will be a lot of work. hired a woman who many of you may know but many of the people in the community know who will be our project manager. is. it will help to have her with us. it's a lot of work. we need someone to move us in the right direction. i'm excited about that. we had our first meeting august 8th and we will continue to meet monthly. we will have some committees working alongside that bigger workgroup. we also just launched residential care for at the elderly group. this is something that the coordinating council has taken on, in part at the request of supervisor he who is really interested in ensuring that there are residential care facility beds in san francisco. as we know a lot of them have disappeared and there is just a whale in the city to make sure that we maintain what we have

and hopefully for entice people to grow the number of beds that they have that they're contracting the city for. this is something that we have announced we are very interesting and. we put $1 million into really helping to support the rcf be in san francisco and we are hoping that this council and workgroup can find some recommendations and good solutions for keeping residential care facilities in the community, particularly when we think about the people who need the most. who which is the people who are in the behavioural health system, people who are clients of adult protective services and people with advanced dementia. we will be working on that. again, there are a number of people in this room who are involved in this process. in that group. and the last thing i wanted to talk about today, is the mayor's office sent out a bunch of policy recommendations.

you may have read in the paper or heard that right after mayor breed was elected, she had a lot of policy advisors and broke them out into different interest areas to come up with certain policy and recommendations for her and things they would like her to work on. i think she was trying to find a diverse group of people. meeting people from all walks of life, regular san francisco residents who work in or go to school here, people with disabilities, older people, children and, you know, who will represent those groups. and business et cetera. people came together on a saturday and really started to hammer out a recommendations. she has asked departments to take a look at those recommendations and respond with a short memo about where our interests fit in with the recommendations and what we're doing about some of those recommendations if we are

already working on those. we are in the process as a department of -- in preparing that memo. we as a human services agency will combine our memos and sends them back as an agency. that is something we are working on and it is due at the end of the month. i think that's what i have for today unless you have -- that is what i have for questions today. >> vice president loo: i am just wondering, do we have the final budget yet thought about that apartment? >> we do have the final budget for the department, but, yes. the mayor signed the budget on august 1st, so we have our final budget, yes. >> vice president loo: what is the month? >> i don't remember exactly what it is. where is alex? $334 million. >> president serina: question. you mentioned the

reauthorization for the older americans act and the thinking and discussion about the political strategy to see that that is done. how widespread is familiarity with the elder americans act? how much does the public know about it and what it entails and how it benefits people? >> i think a lot of people do not know about it. there are a lot of communities that have really focused on talking about it and getting information out about it and there are counties within california that have been a pretty good job of that. particularly, i think people take the opportunity when they are doing their area plan to do public education around the older americans act, and they put out infographics and things like that that really describe how the older americans act works and how it really works within communities. that is not something that we have done yet. but we certainly could. i would say, if you ask the average american about the older americans act, probably there's

not a lot of knowledge about its me when i don't see much about it in publications. i think, given it's significance, if there is a written reason -- way we can raise the profile, it may generate more political support. >> i agree. it is a good point. that is something i can bring up as a board member at the national association of agencies on aging. i can bring it up with them and i have a close association with people above aarp and american society on aging. they have a group that meets, you know, aging association organization where they can certainly be talking about that more. >> president serina: aarp would be a great advocate. finally, on the policy recommendations and the information that mayor breed has requested, was there anything in those taskforces that was a surprise to us? different from what we are doing? a variation on a theme? >> not so much.

i think there's a lot of opportunity to talk in our short memo. there's a lot of opportunity to talk about how the work we are doing fits in with the policy recommendations. whether it be focused on, you know, there was a group that was looking at children and families and older adults. there was -- certainly we fit there. even within homelessness, when we think about the homeless prevention work that we do, you know, or the number of homeless individuals that we work with in our various programs, when we think about housing some of the work we do with housing subsidies, we think about workforce and employment, you know, we are certainly doing work there. i think there are a number of -- and even in equity as a whole. there was a section therapeutic the work that we do brings a different lens to the equity conversation when we start talking about older people and people with disabilities. there's an opportunity to say, you know, these are areas where we are doing these things.

they may not match exactly who the people came up with the recommendations were thinking, but they add to the conversation and to the great work the city is doing. >> president serina: maybe we can use them to help advocate thought that more money for at some of the programs. [laughter] >> president serina: thank you. any other comments or questions? any comments or questions from the public? thank you. employee recognition. the department of aging and adult services commission and executive director shereen will be recognized -- will be recognizing sanchez from the d.a. ss office for her hard work -- for her hard work and dedication. [applause] [cheering] [laughter]

>> ok. can everyone hear me? ok. congratulations. i want to start off by talking about the great work that the eligibility unit within the organization does. they do very special work. one of the things that we -- i can't talk like this. i will talk like this. [laughter] >> can you hear me? 's perfect.

one of the things we are really excited about today is that she does fantastic work within her unit. i also wanted to talk about what the eligibility organization does. they are the benefits and resource hub. and what the eligibility workers do is they help people access and medicate benefits. [laughter] [indiscernible] >> the human services agency and the work that it does -- >> our mics are not working. the wireless mics are not working.

they said they were going to come up and take a look. ok, thanks. [indiscernible] [laughter] [indiscernible]

>> she displayed good leadership and displaying good skills. she has become our unofficial in-house i.t. expert due to her vast computer knowledge. she has always lent a helping hand when staff has had technical issues and she has taken the lead in developing our sharepoint website. she is a great spent -- fan of disneyland and star wars and she is a dog owner. [laughter] i think one of the things that is great if she has brought her experience from another unit to this unit to pick one of the things we have really noticed in building this particular site is that we have needed the expertise of people who are willing to come over from other programs and work with us and teach us about what they know about eligibility and the world of medicaid and medic health.

thank you so much. on behalf of -- on behalf of the department of aging and adult services, i want to say that you are our employee of the month for august. [cheers and applause] >> good afternoon, everyone. i just wanted to say thank you file for this award. it is an honour to be employee of the month and i want to thank my fellow coworkers, supervisors and the leadership thought by the continued support. thank you. [applause]

>> was going before the board of supervisors. we had two site visits. one to the south sunset senior center and also one to the george davis senior center in the bayview. lastly, mrs. karen kinsick reports from the rebuilding reported that they would do a project in the bay view on september 15th. >> any comments or questions? thank you, leon. >> what are your findings on the two site visits? >> the site visits were positive. the one from the sunset -- south sunset senior center, it's a very small site with it being utilized quite a bit.

there are issues that mainly a chinese community with 70 lunches per day. the food is brought in by a self-help for the elderly and it's utilized quite a bit. from the george davis senior center, also that site is really being utilized and that the number of food clients have increased at that senior daily. so it's really utilizing there in the bay view. >> thank you. >> thank you. >> any other comments or questions? any comments or questions from the public? thank you, very much, leon. >> thank you. >> next dianne lawrence with the joint legislative committee report. >> good afternoon, commissioners. i've been prag that so i didn't say good morning. and director mcspadden. my printer ran out of paper and i turned it off before i ran the

last two pages. a couple of the key bills i wanted to discuss are here and you will all the details in your minutes. as you know, we've been tracking 33 bills this year. we're coming down to the end of this two-year session. one of the bills that we had been talking about was prevention of not having convicted -- anyone convicted of a crime working at residential care facilities. at health fair facilities. that bill was gutted in the last couple of weeks so so it is off the table and it is starting in january and the next session. we've had one bill signed by the governor and chaptered. that was on ex panning the defense of what a dependent adult is, whether they live alone or not. the rest of the bills are moving

through. there was a lot of activity from the last time i reported to you back in may. we've had two meetings in june and july. a number of the bills, the one i want to point out because it ties into our discussion of the older americans act that is ab-2719 by assembly member irwin. that is to look at the -- the department of aging is responsible to administer the olders act in california. there are various functions and duties on the department with respect to the development of programs. this bill revising the social needs in our current legislation. the california part of the bill to include cultural and social isolation caused by sexual orientation, gender identity and gender expression.

that bill was ordered to the assembly august 6th. there was a lot of action. we've been talking about the bill for grab bars in public rest rooms. that bill has been modified. it's hard to determine whether or not the grab bars will be there. the language was changed from public rest rooms grab bars to ab bue latorre com part to rest room stalls disabilities act and it was sent to appropriations. a number of these bills are for the third hearing. that is also of the legislation that has been pending on emergency services. senator wiener's bill on conservatorship is modified. it's been amended and moved to

the next group to look at it. i apologize for some of the others that are missing. there's been a lot of activity. we're still waiting for more things to be signed and finalized. >> thank you, dianne. any comments or questions? >> yes, i have a quick question. on the grab bar legislation, the change in language, does that also change therefore the content of? >> i'm not sure. i need to look at that a little further. as i was reading that, that definitely is a question. i think there was a concern with the advisory council and c.s.l. which is sponsoring that bill, that the grab bars are important beyond just the a. d.a. stalls so i'll check on that for you. >> dianne, the bill, regarding employing people with records. why was it gutted? what is the opposition's

argument to the bill? >> i don't know. sometimes what will happen is say bill will be gutted because they need that bill number to put something else in. so it's a way -- i used to see that what i was working. you would be tracking a bill and all of a sudden -- we've seen that with at least one other one this year. it may even be a few more. it's something we're tracking. and then all of a sudden it is something entirely different the next time we meet. they're using that. i can take a look at that and report next time on that one. >> thank you. >> any other comments or questions? any from the public? yes -- >> one i wanted to check in with is ab1881 passed -- >> i'm meals on wheels san francisco. nice to see you. >> ab81881 is cash out reversal

so that passed. it sounds ridiculous because i think we've all been trying to work on that for who knows -- 30 or 40 years. that reversed. that means starting next summer, 2019, people on s.s.i. will be eligible for cal fish. fresh. there's a lot of work and the state is taking a lead. the rest of us will benefit and make sure our county really has the highest rate of people getting on cal fresh that we can see. it will be tough. there's a lot of mess there. >> we'll add that to our tracking. it wasn't one we had been tracking. >> thank you both. next is the long-term care coordinating council report. >> good afternoon commissioners, director mcspadden. my name is valerie coleman. i'm a program annalist with dos. i will give the council updates.

they met july 12th. there was an update on the dignity fund from melissa mcgee. they had a retreat in june. the second item was discussing retreat next steps and what they want to do with that information. it was focused on looking on the mission, the vision, policy goals and strategies moving forward. so they're continuing to digest that and figure out the next steps. the next stop i can was around, we got a budget update. we got a city wide budget update and analysis from dan kaplan, as well as a dos-specific update from shireen mcspadden. we had a presentation from michael blecker around the challenges we know the v.a. system and how that effects older adults. the presentation, and all the information, is available on the long-term care coordinating council's website. including minutes, agenda, other

things like that. so if folks would like to review you can look at that and contact me directly. do you have any questions? >> thank you, valerie. any comments or questions? >> any comments or questions of the public? thank you, again. >> thank you. >> the case report. no case report. the nominating committee is recommending the commission to reappoint the following advisory council members who are incumbent. william marota, kay parek, and beverly taylor. because this is coming from the nominating committee we don't need a second. do we have any discussion? any comments or questions from the public? call to question all in favor of reappointing these three? >> aye. >> any opposed? thank you, the motion carries. please thank and congratulate

all three. right now it's time for general public comment and that is for anything that is not on the agenda. please come up. >> good afternoon commissioners. my name is anna sylvester. i have one visual i'm going to show on the projector in my speech. i'm here to ask for your support and your e-mail help. the sfmta board meets next tuesday, august 21st, here at 1:00. to vote on final approval of the gerry rapid project. there are no more appeals. the m.t.a. staff recommendation is to lead the 38 inbound stop at starking and not to relocate

the stop to goff and gerry. this is not a good recommendation for seniors and people with disabilities. here is why -- the current stop is isolated, scene of crime, and dark at night. in m.t.a.'s words there are no eyes. what that means is there's nobody around. >> please speak into the mic. >> sorry. there's no one around to see you. it's a long, winding hill. it is scary at night, it's scary in the morning too. it's notorious. there are people loitering, sleeping in the bushes, around there and everything else. so i can't take this stop anymore. i'm afraid to stay there. wait for the bus or get off the bus. the current stop is on the slope

hill. it's difficult for seniors and disabled to dis mount and get off and on the bus. especially if you have a baby stroller, wheelchair, shopping start, et cetera. i myself have trouble doing this. the proposed stop is open and visible with a lot of eyes. it is in front of saint mary's cathedral. you can see what is going on there. you don't have to be afraid to stand and wait for the bus. it's' year to get on and off. the proposed stop is the site of community meetings, conventions, tourists and pilgrim destinations as well as a landmark and architect actual gem in our city. here is a list of community stakeholders who support relocating the stop to goff and gerry. m.t.a. accessibility advisory committee or mack.

the m.t.a. owned advisory supporting supports relocation, yes, you heard that right. senior disability action supports relocation. the cathedral saint mary's cathedral. the cathedral hill tower homeowners association. the dr. ellen clark, grace cathedral. patricia tuttle, mr. don lee, mr. murray, fifth church of christ the scientist 450 or farrell street. deconan see brian. robert brown stone attorney, sean fletcher. >> thank you. >> steve white and i will conclude by just asking you to e-mail the mta board to support relocation of the inbound 38 to gough and geary. the board meeting is next tuesday at 1:00. >> thank you, very much. any other general public comments? hearing none. any old business? hearing none.

new business? item a. requesting authorization to modify the exiting grand agreement with institute on aging for the provision of increasing the center for elderly suicide prevention and grovgrief-related services for programs capacity. during the period of july 12,018th through june 302,019th for $180,000, for a new grand amount of 485,273, plus a 10% contingency for a new total amount not to exceed $533,800, welcome. >> good afternoon. president, commissioners and director mcspadden. i am program annalist. today where here to seek your approval for a modification to i.o.a.s, center for elderly suicide prevention as known as the cesp program.

the cesp program provides 24/7 crisis support to older adults and adults with disabilities. out calls that increase social connectiveness for isolated individuals. as well as grief support groups, grief counseling sessions and outreach and education for caregivers, and provencials related to topics on suicide risk, assessment and suicide prevention. the program has seen a increase in its demand for services over the past three years. additionally, the community education and training sessions it provides. during that time, the program has provided more than 2,000 individual grief counseling sessions, provided trainin traid outreach to 3,900 individuals and served 5,000 residents in san francisco. in addition to the increase call volume, cesp has seen a shift in the types of calls it receives.

callers are presenting with more complex emotional issues, including showing initial signs of mental health issues, as evidence by exhibiting symptoms such as delusional thoughts, paranoia, anxiety and depression. it could be relighted to increase in promotion and awareness of the program services through insurance companies, clinics and other community providers. to manage and properly serve clients in the community need, csp is looking to increase services, which includes increases in staffing, as follows with proposed contract modifications. the program will use additional funding to help pay for five friendship line councillors, part of their role is to support and manage the volunteer staff. the program will be using funds to cover the cost associated with training the volunteers. which is a corner stone of the cesp program. last fiscal year, they had 176

volunteers come through the program. costs with training volunteers include background checks, putting together and producing materials for a training binder that every volunteer receives. in addition to providing lunch for the all-day training sessions they have for volunteers throughout the year. the program will use funds to pay for the overnight supervisor of the friendship line. this is a 24 hour crisis line so the crisis line is operative for 15 hours a day during normal business hours and in the evening hours there's a volunteer each night that staffs the phone line for crisis calls that come in. additionally, the program will be increasing service units to increase the call volume and need for program services in the following catagories. i'm going to speak to the service unit increase that's will happen. first, the unduplicated client will increase from 850 to 1200

per contract year. the hours for grief education. we're talking hours not individuals. the hours for grief education, training and community outreach will increase from 25 hours per contract year to 50 contract hours per year. the number of participants who are provided grief education and training will increase from 500 per contract year to 725 per contract year. the number of unduplicated consumers provided formally motional support increasing from 125 consumer a year to 150 per contract year. and finally, the number of individual grief counseling sessions will increase from 50 per contract year to 150 per contract year. thank you for your time and i'm happy to answer any questions that you may have. >> thank you, very much, mike. any comments or questions from the commission? commissioner lou. >> what is the patten for this

program? in san francisco we have different ethnic groups. do they have bilingual people in different languages? >> that's a great question. right now services are provided in english and spanish. i.o.a.cesp program looks to engage diverse communities within san francisco to get individuals to come in that speak multiple languages. there's active involvement when they're out doing their training education and their promotion to seek out bilingual individuals to help with the program. at times, we're able to get more people. there's a low. they did have chinese-speaking capacity with some of the volunteers later in the last fiscal year. those people have since moved on and now they're actively looking to recruit more volunteers from the chinese community. >> we have a large asian population in the city.

i thought, you know, maybe with all the staff at least they could be actively recruiting bilingual-asian and volunteers just are volunteers. >> correct, yes, my understanding is they are actively pursuing that and it's part of the interview process to find out if they have bilingual capacity. chinese and spanish and the targeted languages in san francisco. >> when they do the educational to the community and other agencies, do they have bilingual materials? do you know? >> to my knowledge they don't have bilingual materials at this time. >> will you be encouraging them to have bilingual materials, because, you know, we a diverse community in the city of san francisco. >> it's a point that's very well made and i agree and part of my on going conversation with leadership and cesp is diverse

staffing and looking into getting materials translated as appropriate into alternate languages. >> one last question. and i just feel very uncomfortable about the increase of the rent on the last page. it's jumps from $9,856 to $19,445. i mean, i know that -- i brought this question up in the past. it's like a base on the number of the staff. but it really -- i just feel uncomfortable about only having four additional staff and a little increase of other staff and yet the rent has gone up so much. i'm a program person. i just felt like if we have less to reduce the operating costs,

we will be more beneficial to have the program. >> sure. >> john. good afternoon. contracts director for h.s.a. we'll see this a lot more with the increases in rent. i'm sure the commission understand the non profits are struggling with the cost to rent. it drives a lot of the non profits out of the city. out of city government, there's a program to help support non profits to stay in the city. so having said that, when we review the contracts as they come in from the program and we present them to the commission, we look at line items and try to see if they're within a reasonable cost. and so, a lot of times with non profits they own the property so there's zero rent. in the old days, if you were to break it down per f.t.e. it

might be 200 or 300 per person per month. on this i think it's 5.6 and it comes around 430 -- it us didmendoesn'ttake into account . nowadays square foot for office is $76 per square foot. this is actually -- where we're seeing the increase is. some of the stuff for some of the programs we're seeing $900 per person per month and this false in the $430. it's a big jump but i think it's a reflection of cost to rent, office rent in the city. it is one thing, i think an easy rule of thumb is to take it and divide it into the rent and try to factor in if there's additional space that that program uses. >> institute on aging have their

own buildings so they have no threat of increasing rent. isn't that right? >> i.o.a. is here. you can talk to them? >> it's their own building. >> my name is car -- >> speak into the mic. >> i'm the senior director of behavior health. i oversee the friendship program. this is mia greg the director of the friendship line. i.o.a. owns the building. >> may i ask a question. it's my understanding that some of the programs of i.o.a. have been utilized at a building owned by cpmc that they lost that lease and so they're actively looking for office space.

i'm wondering if this is part of that issue? >> i don't know that i'm qualified to provide the answer to that question. i don't know whether or not that is what would contribute to this. that is true, we have lost space and we're seeking out additional space for our programs. >> ok. >> we're not sure if this program represents incremental, actual incremental cost in terms of rent or a riel occasion of existing rent. we don't have the answer to that, is that right? >> so our rent is based on a standard equation used across all programs in the organization. it's based on, as was said, f.t.e. and square footage and so, our program is quite large. we have over 100 volunteers at any given time. we actually have a fair amount of square footage within our building. the rent that was presented is based on adding those f.t.e. in

a larger space. previous personnel allocated were generally in much smaller office spaces sharing -- you know, two desks within a space that was previously for one person. you are seeing an expansion because it's in a larger space. >> and again, even if the premises are owned, there are expenses associated with rental property, they would have to be allocated out. this program, is it taking place in owned premises or in leased premises? >> owned premises. >> owned premises. so this represents an allocation to in theory, the costs are fixed so another program would be getting less of an allocation, which mayor may not be a program we'rmay -- may orme

funding. >> one thing that sometimes i think for non profits in the budget, there are costs that are associated that are treated as rent that are not rent. there's ways to capture through depreciation and other items. i think we'll have to look at this budget item and categorize it in terms of how it's charged and determine what costs come under it. >> what might be helpful in the future for issues like this, is if we might told whether this is actually an incremental expense to the agency or rie re allocatn of existing expense. any other comments or questions? >> i just want to thank you for the presentations but also on the challenges non profits face. my organization convenes the c.e.o.s of the 15 major faith-based non profits, which,

during the great recession, were being asked to cut their budgets by 30% and the programs and staff were disappearing. they were never fully reinstated and with the housing affordability crisis and the real estate affordability crisis, so many of them were displaced. and so, they are struggling. they continue to struggle. the issue of retaining and attracting staff is an equal struggle. i just wanted to thank you for highlighting that. i would also ask, with the question of language -- [ please stand by ]

>> i don't have the latest numbers off the top of my head. i can get those for you. there has been an increasing age 50 and above the. we can get those to you off-line eric and the other part of this is a communities are more aware of the friendship line than they were in previous years. there is a more common resource that may be four or five years ago. now there is a combination of statistics of suicide rates of for seniors increasing, and then locally, more communities, more providers out there and referring clients to it. it is a combination of both. i will get you those numbers so you have them for reference. >> president serina: don't go to a great deal of trouble, it is just something to monitor. because if the need is increasing as well as the awareness, then we may want to look at this again. thank you. any other comments or questions?

called the question. all in favor? >> we actually have to wait for commissioner loo to return. >> president serina: thank you. [laughter] >> you don't have a soft shoe act? >> president serina: i do. but i did not bring it. music art -- [laughter] >> may i ask a more -- more questions about the friendship line in general? with this modification and the questions that have proceeded, with this modification helped me to demand -- do we have the capacity of volunteers and resources to meet the perceived demand that is out there clearly does this get us there? >> that is a great question as well. the program for program file for the last three years has physically seen the increasing services needed. they are monitoring visits.

they have met or exceeded their service units. the areas where we are seeing increases is based on the fact that there are more people in need and more people calling in and more people wanting the outreach. the big indicator could be the tripling of the grief counselling sessions. i mean, that is huge. that is the in person or group sessions. entered -- individual. you know, when i was reviewing the service unit increase, that is one that stuck with me the most. the individual need for support around loss and grief. >> president serina: out of curiosity, are there care for the caregiver programs we for folks who are injuring secondary trauma. >> right. there is a component of that in the program with the grief and loss groups. sometimes people call in who have lost somebody and maybe

they're not exactly suicidal, but they are going through a major life trauma and to the friendship line has the capacity to field the call and get them appropriate services, whether it is with this program or something else. >> my question was more towards a volunteers who are on the line or the staffing. is there some support for five them? >> that's a great question. the friendship line counsellors that are now staffed, there is someone there for every hour of the day picked a 15 hour shift is supervised by the friendship line counsellors. they are there for for the volunteers if they have any questions. if an unexpected call comes in that they need assistance with, yeah. >> president serina: thank you. any other comments or questions? all in favor? any opposed degree thank you. the motion carries. item b.

requesting authorization to enter into a new grant with trans- metro for at the provision to provide transportation services for office of the public conservator and adult protective services during the period of september first 2018, through june 30th, 2021 in the total amount, not to exceed $80,000. welcome, sandra. >> good afternoon president and commissioners and executive director. i am the program manager at the public conservator office. in the regular function of the public conservator office and the adult protective services program, we often need transportation services to serve clients who have very high levels of need. through the use of this contract, will be able to provide this service to those linked to these programs. the public conservator uses a service approximately 5-6 times a month, typically to transport clients between varying levels of care to attend legal

proceedings, and/or medical appointments. the adult protective services context, transportation is used to assist clients to meet with legal services providers, attend medical appointments and/or to obtain benefits. commissioners, i seek your approval for this contract. thank you for for the consideration and i am happy to answer any questions you may have. >> president serina: thank you. any comments or questions? >> i did have one quick question. so the staff for trans- metro will provide couriers to vulnerable clients. whether it be mental illness, physical fair teat -- failed to, welt -- wheelchair device mobility, et cetera, are they also et cetera, are they also trained in cultural competency, lgbtq awareness, different language considerations as well? >> that's a really good question. i believe that came up in one of the discussions, but i defer to the contracts manager to verify. >> president serina: thank

you. any other comments or questions? commissioner loo? >> president serina: we have not asked for public comment. >> good afternoon. and the project manager. although those are very good traits and skill sets that was not part of the original association we had. however, that is something that if we need to incorporate as part of the dissociation going forward, we certainly would like to take that into consideration. >> sure. >> president serina: commissioner into consideration. >> sure. >> president serina: commissioner loo? >> vice president loo: this is a new contract, ok. how many people bid for this contract? how many agencies? >> two. >> vice president loo: how many? >> two. >> vice president loo: so they were selected. i have a question. this is a new program. how would the client be -- before this, how was this handled in transporting the client's?

>> through our previous contractor. this is a new contract for for us. we had a previous provider. >> vice president loo: oh, oh, k. how many clients are we talking about? >> we use the service about 5-6 times a month. our unit caseload is about 550 people. it is not often. >> vice president loo: ok. i just looked at the budget. it seems like its a little bit high. eighty-five dollars an hour. i don't know. i do not have any money to take this. [laughter] i am just wondering, is $85 an hour, and is a minimum of 44 hours per trip. am i correct? >> that is correct. >> vice president loo: and also the attendant care is 49 dollars and 50 cents an hour. isn't that expensive?

it is a question. i don't know. i know that some of the residents in my facility, they use attendant care and it is $25 an hour. and this is 4950. i am just trying to ask the question. isn't that a bit high? >> on the contract director with hsa. people are coming out of mental health facilities and are being transported from the hospital to a program or back. it is not like a normal transportation where you are just going in there. it is the rare circumstance when you have to bring in someone under that type of situation so they can move from a facility to a home where they will live for back. so there is higher liability. >> president serina:

commissioner pappas? >> commissioner pappas: typically services are provided by the driver themselves. if there are places where the park and accessibility, or if there is no parking where an attendant has to assist in this location to the actual permit itself, or have special needs, that is where the separate attendant is added. it is not a standard addition to the hour, plus the attendant. the attendant is optional. >> vice president loo: are you telling me that may be also the attendant has some special training create they are not the regular attendant that does housework? >> that is my understanding. it is also more so with the manpower and the actual assistance available. >> vice president loo: thank you. >> president serina: what kind of vehicle do they use? do they have their own vehicle? does they have their own vehicle? >> yes, they do. they have their yard right across