cultural conflicts as well in providing services, so how can you address that? >> that is a very good question and i think the system has largely been deficient when it comes to the individuals who use asl. we have the ability to get interpreters for those hard-of-hearing or deaf. i'm happy to announce we're piloting our video interpretation service which will assist us in -- video interpretation service, for individuals who are asl users, so that a clinician will be able to work with them in a face-to-face, one on one setting. that is something we're piloting right now and expect to be able to roll out to the rest of the system of care in due time. >> then also in the specific case of sites that are directly

dph, it's important of course on our end, we should educate our providers that they are obligated to inform clients who need sign language support, that those services are available to them. at no cost to the consumer, to the client. and also, you know, from the client's perspective, if the provider is saying that they can't offer you service because they don't have an asl interpreter or what not, i think it's important for the client to actually let the provider know that you, the provider, are obligated to provide this service to us. and so you know, it's kind of a two-way street. we on the administrative side, we should certainly be educating

our providers that they're obligated to provide the service. and also on the client's end, i think it's important to always make sure that you advocate for yourself, just in the sense of letting the provider know that it's not an option of whether or not we provide you service. it's your right -- or my right as the consumer, as the person who needs the asl interpretation to have it. so on both sides, it's just about speaking up and making sure that everyone knows what is in fact available to them. >> yes, we abide by the standard that the availability throughout all of our system, but i wanted to make mention, that we also fund a special deaf community counseling center run by family services agency, where the

therapists themselves are doing sign language. and they're also more familiar and expert about the situations of clients who are deaf or hard-of-hearing. >> co-chair senhaux: any council member questions? oh, co-chair blacksten. >> co-chair blacksten: yes, very good. thank you for that presentation. that is excellent. i wanted just to draw your attention for a moment to service animals. i have a service animal, i'm visually impaired. now when people come in with service animals or emotional support animals -- first off, is your staff trained on how to

work with people who have these animals? and do you require people coming in to show certification that their animal actually is there to provide -- to serve as a guide dog, or emotional support? in other words, do you make sure is that it's for real that, that their animal they're bringing in? >> with regards to whether our staff are trained or not, at this point a lot of the staff are not trained. a lot of them are unaware of the policies, so that's why we're trying to advocate with the higher ups at dph, so we have the resources to provide training across our system for both internal dph staff, as well as our contracted providers. and in fact, most of the issues have come from the contracted

providers who, you know, they just -- they aren't familiar with a lot of the standing policies and so we definitely need to ramp up our efforts with regards to training. now, on the topic of service and support animals, based on the policy, my understanding is that they don't need certification per se, but they do need some verification of like having vaccinations -- what else? just to make sure that it has its rabies shots and what not. but i don't think you need a formal document saying this animal is dedicated toward the role of serving as a support, emotional support or service animal.

>> co-chair blacksten: sometimes you go into public facilities, they require to see verification. in other words, what i have in my case is a photograph that was taken at our graduation. when i was trained with her. so it verifies that she is certified. so if you don't do that, i might recommend you take a look at it. >> i know that the written policy -- and i don't have it on hand -- but i know that there is really only two specific questions that the staff at a site can ask and beyond those two questions, the client is not obligated to provide any further information. but unfortunately, i just can't recall those two specific questions. >> when i get to talk, i'll help

you out. [laughter] okay? >> i'd like to add something. we do have a policy and we take our policies very seriously. and our governing regulatory bodies require us to disseminate the policies in a quality way. and make sure people know the content of the policies. and we have a monthly providers' meeting where every new policy, or policy that is updated, gets presented and discussed to all of the program directors across our providers. and in fact, if we detect a problem, we're very sensitive to this service animal issue, we're very, very sensitive, the moment we detect a problem, we follow up. because if there is a complaint related to service animals, michael and our staff talk to the provider concerned about

what they should be doing. and actually, for your information, last january, michael came to our provider meeting to present the policy of animals because there was an incident that was of concern to us. even though it was not new or updated, we took it to our providers to make sure everybody knows. we take it very seriously. >> co-chair senhaux: thank you, time for one more council member question. >> council member madrid: going back to mike, when it comes to accessibility, access to all of the providers places and you mentioned about the program that

you initially started to come up, right? to make sure all of the housing facilities is compliant when it comes to access, right. now my question is, do you have anybody making sure which one needed to be updated or are you going to have mod to make sure it's compliant? >> we definitely work with mod a lot around these particular issues. you know, there are some sites

in the city where it's a nonprofit provider and they rent out a floor on some older building on market, or wherever in the city it may be, so obviously, in those instances, you know, like there was a case -- a site on market street having an issue with its elevator. and so, you know, physically, they have program rules that were preventing clients in wheelchairs from accessing the second floor where they were doing counseling. so in the event -- if an elevator was out of order, there was issues on how can the client receive service in the counseling area on the second floor if the elevator is out? so we tried to work with the provider to address program

issues like, changing the rules and procedures to allow clients to access the first floor instead. so there is some cases where, in terms of the physical space, there are severe limitations to what can be done. but we do try to work with the leadership to implement some program and procedures that can do their best to accommodate those with physical accessibility issues. >> co-chair senhaux: thank you. we're going to close question and comment from the council. i want to thank our presenters for being here today. excuse me. i'm sorry. i forgot staff. >> we're not quite done, but i'll be brief. hello, again, i'm the director of the mayor's office on disability. thank you so much for coming.

i wanted to offer a few things. first i know that you've been doing a lot of work in terms of looking at what the accessibility needs are, ways to improve, ways to enhance training and to spread training, and also how to best work with our contacting agencies to be providing access. so i just want to again offer the mayor's office on disability support to help advance those efforts. and also, as new leadership comes into the department of public health, also advance that agenda at the department head level. so please know you have our commitment. and we want and would to meet with you anytime to think through your accessibility strategies, especially as it comes to training and reaching out to contact agencies. so please extend this offer to

the rest of your staff and continue to talk with us. we really appreciate what you're doing and are here to help. and then secondly, i just wanted to confirm that our colleagues are correct in terms of service animals, in terms of the federal guidelines not required to provide certification, except for appropriate vaccination of a service or support animal. and in fact, if someone is asking for that, that is something that is done in error, or not in the guidance of the current recommendation around interacting with service animals. i just wanted to clarify what we presented are correct and the questions that you can ask are what is the nature of your service animal and what tasks are they trained? is this a service animal and

what tasks are they trained to perform? and we work within that construct. if the service or support animal is not acting appropriately or somehow endangering the environment, in those conditions, the service or support animal can be asked to leave the premises, but again, those are rare instances. i just wanted to confirm that is the process and that is correct. just again to extend our help and support and let us know what we can do next. >> thank you very much for that offer. if i could take 30 seconds just, a little bit of a story where we worked with the office of disability. our largest residential treatment provider in san francisco does have a policy and a practice in place for

admitting patients for clients with service animals into residential treatment. and this policy was forged through the collaboration with the mayor's office of disability about seven years ago. and this particular case, the individual who entered care, with he worked very closely with health right 360. the individual was admitted into care on treasure island, where there was plenty of space for the animal to run an play. the individual did successfully complete treatment and is well. we were very happy at the outcome of that particular case and pleased and happy we have a residential treatment provider that does have protocol in place to admit individuals into residential treatment if they have a service animal. >> thanks for sharing that story. it's good to hear success. >> absolutely. >> i have a quick comment as well.

i just wanted to inform the council that michael rojas and tony rucker who were mentioned earlier, they work closely with myself personally and donna atkins and they've attended our ada coordinator training academies and they reach out to us for technical assistance on a regular basis. i know that ada, access for people with disabilities in general, is a high priority for them and their department. we continue to work with them. they have a lot of ideas how to improve the access even more. just wanted to thank them for their work on this as well. >> thank you very much. >> co-chair senhaux: thank you. any other questions or comments for staff? we're going to go ahead and open up this information item for public comment. are there any speaker cards? does anyone wish to come to the

podium to make a comment or question? on this information item? anyone on the bridge line? okay. we're going to go ahead and take a 15-minute break. it's 2:15. please come back in 15 minutes so we can start our next presentation. thank you, everyone. >> one second, denise. >> co-chair senhaux: excuse me. thank you, control room. we're going to go onto information number 7. city agency, deaf advocates and representatives from community based organizations come together to give input on the san francisco police department. i would like to welcome the presenter, captain troy dangerfield from the san

francisco police department. >> first of all, thank you for letting me address the council. i'm captain troy dangerfield from the san francisco police department. >> captain, can you put the microphone closer to your mouth? >> how is that? >> good. >> one of the things i've had the privilege of doing for a last several years is working on the language access working group. we've come a long ways with that. and just recently i was brought on to the deaf and hard-of-hearing working group because they are getting ready to do training and making videos and things like that. and they've been working on a general order. it's a real collaboration. and language access and this kind of fit together. so it makes perfect sense for me to be involved. and it's all about making new

policies that fit, that everyone can live with. so this general order is in the draft stage and it is coming along quite well. chief scott himself sits in on those meetings and those working groups so he can make immediate decisions, so we don't have to go through another step. things around handcuffing in the front and from the back, because that's their mode of communication. and i think we've come a long way there, and we've reached ground where that will be allowed in certain circumstances. so i think that is great. there is fine-tuning. there is always a legal process to everything, but it looks like it's well under way and soon it will be going before all our boards to be approved. so it's just a matter of time. but we love working with the -- with the different groups. and we're learning a lot.

the biggest thing for me coming along is, there is a lot of things i didn't know. the police departments and old organization mindsets have to change. signage. things like that. it's going to be a real brain shift because there is a lot of myths we heard about deaf and hard-of-hearing we have to overcome. we don't have to talk louder, right? it's things we're learning. that's why the training is so important. and we're going to take our time and not just train to say we trained everyone. we have to make sure it's continuous. we have to make sure we doet on a regular -- do it on a regular basis because it's something officers will not come into contact on a regular basis, but hopefully when they do, they'll be refreshed enough to deal with it in a productive manner. any questions? >> co-chair senhaux: i'd like to open up to council member

questions. council member alex madrid? >> council member madrid: hi. thank you for coming. one question i have is that, do you have any officers right now, or in the future, that knows sign language? and do you have any programs to train officers to know how to sign to communicate to anybody that needs that service? >> i know we have one officer that -- >> council member madrid: one. >> -- that can sign. there is another, but that

person is not certified and they don't feel comfortable -- they're still in the process. but i know there is one. that is something we have to start looking at. how can we get people trained, i mean to learn how to sign. that is something we're looking at to see if we can put them through courses to learn how to sign. so hopefully in the future, but again, it's going to move slow because this is something we didn't do before. >> council member madrid: thank you. >> co-chair senhaux: thank you, council member madrid. council member orkid sassouni? >> council member sassouni: i have a few things. the problem with having a lack of community socialization between police officers and the deaf community is that there is not a lot of interaction when deaf people see officers, they know -- you know, they can't touch them to get their attention for communication, so there is a lot of cultural

misinformation. and officers -- so officers sometimes need to leave for safety reasons and we'd like them to wait and give out information before they move on. so the challenging part is there are safety issues in terms of information access, so i'd like that to be addressed. the other thing is how to improve cooperation between those communities, how to share information. they don't know very much about each other. that is difficult and it leads to communication breakdowns. in sacramento they have socials between deaf community members and police officers where they can have more contact with each other. and the police officers are able

and willing to take the time to learn some communication strategies and get comfortable. and then the other issue is in terms of 911, being able to text 911. that may be a separate issue, but to use the rf to try to call and call 911 through the phone is not always working smoothly, so 911 would be the third issue. >> yeah, all those -- all those issues are very important. and those are some of the things that we -- when we talk about training and cultural competency, those are the things we're going to have to work on. we're not familiar with the groups. hopefully they'll be helping us to make sure we're in touch with the different communities.

that's really important. there are all kinds of cultural things that happen in language that you have to understand as well. sometimes it's not just the words, but the whole context of where they are, the demeanor of the person. so we clearly understand that. and it is going to be -- it's kind of an uphill battle because we're behind. there is no doubt the police department is behind when it comes to having access and providing. when it comes to the first thing we're going to tell officers, we're trying to break down this, you can't touch us. i mean, that's not really -- you can touch us, right? so if you try -- if you're trying to hurt us, that's one thing, but if you want to touch us to say, oh, excuse me, that's a common courtesy. that is something that everyone does. that stigma about you can't touch us, we're trying to get rid of that. of course, don't sneak up behind someone. [laughter] hopefully they can

see you. we're just trying to get rid of those things. some of the myths about deaf and hard-of-hearing is things we have to break down too. it's going to be learning for both sides. we want to start with the recruit classes. start in the beginning. don't start with the old people like me. start with the new people. and like we did with language access. we brought people into the classroom and let them teach the recruits. so it would be great to have people like yourself to help us, you know, teach. teach those courses. >> co-chair senhaux: council member co-chair blacksten and then council member williams. >> co-chair blacksten: captain troy, thank you for coming to speak to us. i think you're brave to do that and you're being very transparent in letting us know you're doing the very best you

can and you have a lot to learn. so i really want to commend you for doing that. i'd like to draw your attention to the area of the emergency preparedness. earlier in our meeting we talked a little bit about disabled and functional needs, that's a committee on which i serve. we deal a lot with emergency preparedness, like for example, this horrific fire that we had to encounter earlier in the year and how do disabled people deal with that? but what about earthquakes? or a tsunami? how many training has your officers gotten in terms of emergency preparedness? there are those of us who are blind, blind, hard-of-hearing,

have you gotten training in that area and what would you do in some situations? >> so every disaster or event can be different, but police officers are trained when it comes to emergency management. so emergency management like that, cops are broken up into different teams. they're broken up into different areas of the city. they're put on different watches, like 12 on, 12 off, and all assigned specific duties. if there is evacuation, we have a systematic way of evacuating. it's not like, knock, knock, is anyone there? they have to clear the whole house and see if someone is not there. if a bus goes off the e bankment, you can't say, just one person fell out, you have to

go and clear. there is training for that. do we train every day for that? no. but periodically we do get information on updated things and do little video tutorials to keep it fresh. we had a couple of earthquakes this week. with those earthquakes we got a couple of e-mails, refreshing everyone's memory. there are ways of doing that. and the police department and evacuations and stuff may not be the lead and maybe the department of emergency management may put the fire department in charge and we'll follow their lead. depending on the situation, we respond that way, working as a team. >> co-chair senhaux: council member williams: >> council member williams: my question is similar. i'm wondering if you have any

implementtation from the community. >> in the deaf and -- i don't think there is a person. >> council member williams: could we encourage you to consider? >> absolutely. everyone is invited. i mean, i don't pick any of the people. i was invited to the group. so you know, anyone is welcome. you just say you want to be part of it and they reach out to you. >> council member sassouni: occasionally there is a sighted deaf person and they typically go to the police and fire department to let them know their address, so if there were an emergency, the fire department would know to inform them in particular.

so i think people, deaf folks may go to a police station to do the same thing, and sometimes your staff knows how to handle it, and sometimes they don't. so it would be nice if there was collaboration between the fire and police department in that sense for being aware of your -- who is in your neighborhood. in a small town, that is natural, but in a city like ours, it's harder to achieve. >> i do not know how they register, but i know sometimes when there is a call for service, right, all that information is in the computer assisted dispatch and they know there is someone that has a sight issue or hearing issue or they're not mobile. they can't get out of the bed or something. but i don't know where you register that. but i do know we see stuff in the cad that says that.

that lets the officer know. >> co-chair senhaux: any other council questions. oh, council member helen smolinski? >> council member smolinski: you're not sure where you register, but is that something you encourage families to do with their local fire department, local police station? >> absolutely. if you're a person with some type of disability, first you want to let the family know, above, below, across the street, it's helpful sometimes if that information isn't in there, then when the police arrive, usually somebody in that little group is going to be there and go, oh, that's helen, she has an issue. that lets us know. we won't waste time waiting for someone else. maybe it's a situation where the

door needs to be breached right away. i'm not sure about where you register. i can try to find out. >> council member smolinski: but beyond neighbors, do you recommend going to your local fire department and or police station? >> it can't hurt. we do have what we call emergency cards. they're usually used for merchants, but you can say, here i live at 123 jones street and i'm deaf, or hard-of-hearing, or have a sight issue, or the woman there, she can't get out of the bed, and they'll file it. when they get something for that address, they can look up in that address and see who lives there, phone number of the contact person, and what the issue is. >> council member smolinski: you keep saying things that make me ask another question. but that last part, it sounds like they have to affirmatively look up the card? >> so before we break into any

house, business or anything, we always call back and say can you look at this address and see what notes are on this address? with ekeep that -- each station keeps a list of those addresses in each particular station. >> council member smolinski: thank you so much and thank you for speaking today. >> co-chair senhaux: council member alex madrid. >> council member madrid: going back to the training group that you guys offer for your officers, i know it is only officers can train? >> only officers can get trained? >> yeah. >> well, in the police academy, it's just a recruit.

>> council member madrid: -- someone with a disability-related issue is closed to the public, right. so are you guys inviting people that have disability to participate and to train officers? and can you tell us a little bit about that? >> so we don't have any training lined up yet for the deaf and hard-of-hearing. so we're going to -- we have to make that up. so we're still in that process. once we figure out the general orders are approved, we can start the training. but i can tell you examples from

language access, we were bringing people to speak different languages and help us with the training. just because someone is speaking the language to you, does not necessarily mean that they understand everything you're saying. and they come with examples of how they do that. quick example is they use like a mcdonald's menu. everywhere in the country, in the world, the menu is the same. if you were working a mcdonald's in china and you come in as an american and order a number one, you're getting a big mac. so then they think, you were just speaking the language to me then, because you ordered. but you really didn't. you just did something familiar to you. so they bring that type of training in to show. so it would be that same type of thing. because police have to be assured that, one, we understand

what you said, and two, you understand what we said. the whole circle of communication. so it's not easy. so sometimes we have to slow cops down to let them know, did you verify they understood what you said? you see what i'm saying? so we definitely need people from the different communities to come in and assist with that training, because it makes it so much easier. if i'm just talking, i'm talking english, i'm talking clear, it's easy. but if they have to focus and listen, it takes a lot of skill. >> council member madrid: thank you. >> co-chair senhaux: thank you. any other council member questions? okay. i'm going to turn it over to staff. mod staff, do you have any questions or comments. >> yes, hi. good to see you again. i just wanted to say thanks for coming and offer some clarification and maybe even a little more context. i'll be brief because i want to

make sure we get to public comment, specifically to the departmental general order on communicating with folks who are deaf. so just for the council to know, when we have a departmental general orders are very specific. and this particular departmental general order focusing on deaf communications has been a very engaged process with members of the deaf community, the office of police accountability, and the police department and mayor's office on disability. and the training team is coming in now at this phase, we're about ready to approve the general order to begin to think about how the general order is going to be rolled out to the entire police department. so i just wanted to clarify that. there is a specific training component related to the general

order. there are other training efforts that happen that are connected to disability in the police department, but on this order, training is specifically specified as one of the steps that we're needing to develop. and there has been a lot of stakeholder engagement throughout the process and i anticipate there will continue to be. i was hoping that you might be able to speak for a minute on what you know now? i know there is more content, but could you give context for how you anticipate the training plan will be rolled out? and so we can get a sense of the number of people that are going to be receiving the education specifically to this particular general order? >> every member of the san francisco police department sworn and non-sworn will get the training.

because we do it for everyone. it is going to be education about -- we don't even have the proper signage yet. so through a working group, they come up with different signs we need to put at the stations to let them know what is available. we're working with some of the technology, we're actually right now piloting on -- every officer has a samsung cell phone, and it has an app on it, where they'll be able to do video. so someone that is signing can look at this and then the person can talk to the officer. so we're piloting that right now. and then the education, all those myths, we have to get that out of the way. and we hope to do that by way of video. so the video will be like a longer video talking about myths and all the things about how you deal with everyone. and then we'll cut that video into pieces and it will be distributed on a regular basis

during lineups at each of the stations. they'll clip those and have a conversation about it. and our language access officer will be there to answer questions and give quick scenarios and hopefully we'll bring people from the communities to give those snips. it will be have to be incorporated in the report writing, because it's a different technique. so, it's a lot of pieces to it. and then after all of that is done and everyone is trained, we have to get in on the cycle, so it's continuously reinstituted into their brain, so they keep it, right? because it is a perishable skill. i don't know the call numbers of how many calls we have like this in a day, but i'm sure it's not a lot. so therefore, we want to make sure that when someone does come in contact, even if it's just

one name a year, that they're able to execute and use the tools they've learned and keep that fresh in their mind. that is the end goal. that everyone is able to have it refreshed enough. just like if they had to go into -- go to a shooting. it's a rote type of thing and they know what to do. it is a process. how long will it take? it's going to take time, because we have 2400 officers plus civilian personnel. and it's not the only thing we have to train on, too. because we're still doing our language access training. so it's a lot of things going together. we're hoping to interweave a lot of things because certain things are the same format. that is the plan. >> that is extremely helpful. i have two more brief comments. then we'll move on to public comment. one, i'm assuming that the departmental general order, this particular one, will be going to

commission for approval, correct? >> yes. >> i want to clarify that the meetings are open to the public? >> yes. >> i don't think it's been scheduled, but it will come to a commission meeting and when that happens, the mayor's office on disability will relay that information so folks know you can come to the commission meeting and give comment on this particular general order if you would like to. i just wanted to relay that for our folks in case you're interested in tracking what happens next. and then the other thing is just a brief response in terms of evacuation. i would like the council to know that the -- through the age and disability friendly task force effort, the mayor's office on disability and department of emergency management is working with the fire department on how what their current system for

notification and registration is. and their computer system they have and how to best utilize that for members of the public so they can identify if they would like to. so that effort is still in progress. but it's housed in the fire department. and so that would be -- if you would like to invite the fire department to talk about what we're doing there, i think that would be a great topic for another public meeting of this group. >> if i could just add one thing. if you know people in the deaf and hard-of-hearing community that want to work with us, get in touch. one of the things he was concerned with, when we're using the phones, using the video, is it right? i wouldn't know. just to test it. help us test to see if when they go to use it, are they receiving

the right information. if we were to write out a script and we had the officer use the script, did they get the same information? because i wouldn't know. that's why we do need people to work with us. >> thank you, we'll work on that. >> co-chair senhaux: i just wanted to make a brief comment, captain. i want to express my appreciation for you coming today, before the council, admitting there is work to be done with the department around training and best practices. and just working on etiquette and reaching out to the disability community and council to be of assistance. we thank you for that. that's how we begin to work together and incite change. we want to make the community better for everybody and have a good working relationship. we thank you for everything you do. thank you for being here and presenting before us. >> co-chair senhaux: thank you. i'm going to go ahead and open up public comment.

on this information item. i believe that we have a speaker. >> we do have one public comment. >> hello. good afternoon. can you see me all right? am i in the right spot? can we get the camera to adjust a little? okay, thank you. good afternoon, again. mod and public, i was surprised to see that there was an item on your agenda regarding the police and deaf and hard-of-hearing public. i have been a victim twice, not just once, but twice. and was re-victimized each time. so for a total of four victimizing experiences. i won't give you the details, but the problem that i faced was that the police failed to act

with commonsense. without concern for public safety. and of course i know they need to be concerned about the safety of those around us. and i don't expect them to be superheroes. our city is quite diverse with many languages and cultures and races represented and i understand that all of that is a challenge for the police, yet they failed to act with commonsense. they cannot act as if they know everything. they need to think before acting. and sometimes the training they receive is in error. i don't know that the mod knows enough to help them as well. there is quite a lot of culture and unique features of culture that are not necessarily reflected and has not been respected by the police. they should be, but they haven't been. in other cities i've been to, smaller town cities and so on, they typically have officers acting with more commonsense.

i'm very disappointed. both of the situations where i contacted the police, they tried to avoid coming to me. despite the fact that i had services available so we could communicate, they continued to not want to interact with me, regardless of the fact there was a safety concern. i did not experience it as accessible. i feel whenever i see officers now, i'm uncomfortable. and i feel like having them come here to present to you, they're trying to excuse their behavior and i don't see that as a solution. thank you for listening. i'm very serious about this and i'm not the only deaf person that feels this way in the city. thank you.

>> co-chair senhaux: any more public comment? anyone on the bridge line? we're going to close public comment and go onto the next presentation. number 8, information item, san francisco disability community cultural center survey. i'd like to welcome catherine kudlick and emily beitiks. thank you so much for being here today. >> hi. >> i'm catherine kudlick. >> i'm emily beitiks. >> so we've divided it up into two parts. i'm going to tell you a little bit about the background of the survey, what we've done so far. >> can you move the mike? >> should i start over? >> okay, i'm catherine kudlick.

and this is emily beitiks. and i'm director of the longmore institute and emily is the associate director and we're pleased to present to you and give you an update of where we are. we started with the department of aging and adult services with a contract back over the summer. and we've been working steadily for the past few months to do a background report, you know, finding out what disability culture is everywhere. and talking to various groups within the disability community. we've held focus groups with specific marginalized populations that might not get heard otherwise. we've talked independently with community leaders of organizations. we have a leadership council that is helping advise us. in fact, a couple of the people here on stage are part of that

council. and one of our other council members is in the audience. so we've been pleased to get all sorts of feedback about what is a disability cultural center and what does it look like? san francisco is, as far as we can tell, the first such center that is municipally based in the country. there are other centers at universities, and that is common, but for a city to have one is forward thinking and it's great. the cultural center is funded by the department of aging and adult -- or run by it through the dignity fund passed in 2016. and they put out a call for proposals and the longmore institute answered the call. and we're very excited to be working with these different populations and learning a ton about what the city wants, who

is here, what is -- where the gaps are. all of these kinds of things. and i for forgot to mention we've done a survey. it just closed a couple of weeks ago. we surveyed people throughout san francisco. we got 655 responses to the survey, so we were pleased about that. we're in the process of digesting the data and finding cross places where there are great ideas and getting some really good feedback. is there anything else? or you can fill it in? >> thanks. so just a little more about what we've done so far. you're catching us right in the heat of this project, but we felt like it was a good opportunity to get to share with you before we get to the findings stage. so the background research we did was really rich, exciting component of the project. and we're looking forward to

sharing it far and wide when the project concludes. we visited seven of existing cult really centers -- cult cultural centers across the city. this allowed us to get really good like view of what is possible, what is working at the centers. and we used that to develop our survey. so the survey took about 12 minutes as mentioned, it is closed. we received 655 responses. we reached out to 170 groups and organizations we felt were likely to have disability constituents and asked for them to help us publicize the survey. it was available in five

different languages. and it was electronic survey, but we did have paper surveys offered in a few locations where we were targeting specific groups we felt were underrepresented. so we did specific outreach at the pomeroy center, the v.a. hospital, collected through the san francisco public library, and two different asian american community centers because we felt we were not getting an adequate number of asian american participants. we did the five focus groups that cathy mentioned, it was to reach the marginalized and get qualitative conversations about what their vision would be for a cultural sent center. we reached out to vets,

transition youth, 18-24, lgbtq and people of color. there is a lot of crossover. a lot of people occupy multiple identity from these categories and ethnicity groups. between the data we have and the focus group data and then again the 14 interview with disability leaders in the bay area -- or sorry -- in san francisco, we think we have mapped a rich picture that allows us to move forward. so the next step that happens in the next few months leading to the final report that will be published in april, is taking all this data with -- we're crunching the data right now, so don't push me on the specifics there, because i definitely don't have it, but we're going to take this data with our leadership committee and really develop what will be the sort of next call for this project moving forward.

so we're going to develop a value statement. you knows the disability cultural center should have these values. mission and vision. and also these are the mandatory qualifications that the center have. and this is preferred qualifications. it's really taking all of the thousands of ideas we got from people want swimming pool, people want a spa, what are the things that they wanted to feel welcome in the center. so the department of aging and adult services knows how to move forward with something that is meeting the needs of the community and not stepping over services already provided. we're available to answer questions. >> co-chair senhaux: i'd like to

open up to call member, questions? council member alex madrid. >> council member madrid: thank you for coming. i have two questions for you guys. one question, the center is specifically for disability community, correct? >> yeah, it's definitely for community and culture. and one of the things we discovered in our background research, is that those two things are intertwined. when you have a sense of community, culture can flourish, but also culture allows people to connect together and build opportunity as well. i don't know what the formal name of the institution will be, but some sort of movement to think about the words having community and culture both in the names of whatever it is, because they're very

intertwined. >> council member madrid: are you guys going to plan -- in san francisco right now? >> no. it won't be tied to san francisco state. it's a city project and the longmore institute on disability was hired to do the planning and recommendations. but that has been something we've had to manage all along. >> council member madrid: the second question i have is i know you touched on different community, on disability, correct. can you talk about what you have

planned on -- are you thinking of how to -- into a community? >> so we're learning from ed roberts. it's a very different model from what we've determined through our research. i mean, ed roberts is a kind of consortium of individual organizations and they're all there. some are part of the disability community and have roots that go way back. some are brand new and have no connections to the disability community. so there is no real central -- well, how would you put it? there is a kind of committee

that oversees ed roberts campus, but it's not seen as an entity in and of itself. the center is not seen as making its decisions as a center to the broader community. there are exceptions. they have programming and collaborative things that the different groups do together, but it's not necessarily an overarching cultural center. what we're discovering that would be a better fit in san francisco is not to have individual organizations kind of working as collaborators at it, but it would be a city-run center, kind of like the lgbtq center, or the latino cultural center. more like one of the existing. it would be like adding a jewel to the crown of the existing cultural centres. >> thank you. ed