year. january meeting of the commission for the department of disability and aging services. will the secretary please call the role. [roll call] please note that executive director shireen mcspadden is present. we ask you silence all cell phones and sound-producing devices. >> thank you. may i have a motion to approve the january 10 agenda? >> so moved. >> second. >> any discussion? all in favor? >> aye. >> any opposed? thank you. the motion carries. may i have a motion to approve the december 4, 2019, meeting minutes? >> so moved. >> do i have a second? >> second. >> thank you.

any discussion? call the question, all in favor? >> aye. >> any opposed? the motion carryies. now item number 4, the director's report, executive director shireen mcspadden. >> good morning and happy new year. is this mic on? so i feel like we just met because the holidays kind of sucked up much of december, so i don't have a huge amount to report. i was in washington dc the second week of december which was actually after we met last month. and i was there for the meetings and they are the national association of area agencies on aging. the december meeting is when we put together the policy priorities for the next year. so we spent quite a bit of time working on that and the issues that came up were the ones that you would expect. things like aging and

homelessness, food insecurity, the big kind of big ticket items and basic needs issues that are kind of hitting older adults across the country. so i think everybody was really saying we are experiencing the same issues. there also continues to be a lot of focus on workforce, both for the workforce issues we have around care giving and gerontology and things like that, but also there was a big focus on the need for jobs for older adults and the need for support for jobs for older adults and advocacy and all of that. so it's always interesting to be there and hear from other people across the country and also kind of sobering to realize that these issues are really so widespread and nobody is surprised by that, but really just the stories are really sobering about what people are dealing with.

and i think the fact that older adults get overlooked in big conversations so often. so there's a lot of need for advocacy like what we have in san francisco, across country. the second thing was i think the big thing that happened in december and into january was that i think all of you read about city college, and i believe we actually spoke about it at the last meeting because it had just happened, city college announced they were cutting back on a number of courses. one of the big cutbacks was the older adult learning program. and there were 50 of the 58 existing classes were slashed in the budget that city college put out. and of course that meant that a number of classes that were going to start in january for the spring semester were immediately cut and people were told those classes wouldn't exist. and so the city was really very interested, the mayor's office, the board was really interested

in figuring out how to preserve some of those classes for older adults. and fortunately because of the fund, we had some one-time only dollars available that we were able to work with the mayor's office to structure over three years, so we can use one-time only money over three years to preserve some classes. and it's only 17 of the 50 that were cut. and the reason we were able to do the 17 is because they happen to be in senior centers that we already fund or in centers that we already fund. so we already had a relationship with these sites. we fund them directly. and what this means is we will be able to fund them directly to continue the classes in those sites for three years. and i think it's really great that the city was able to step

in and do that. it's a little complicated, because moving it from the city college, part of the city college budget and that structure into a structure where it's run by these various senior centers is a little complicated for people to figure out. so we are working through the details right now as to what that will look like. but generally speaking, people in the senior centers were really excited that their classes will continue. i think in my 17 years with the department i've never gotten so many letters and phone calls about something. it was clearly striking a cord with the population that we serve in san francisco. people were very upset about the loss of these classes and continue to be upset about the loss of the classes that are not preserved right now. and i know many of you are involved in the advocacy around that. but for right now we were able to preserve those classes.

and i also want to say i think that for the senior centers that we partner with, this is a big piece of the programming. and to lose that would have been really hurtful. and those classes are a way that people come in the door, and then they are able to access other services at the senior center and also maybe services later on down the line on our spectrum of services when they need them. and so preserving that seemed to be very important. the other thing i'm going to do in my report today is to give you the six-month update on our action plan when we met back in september, august, whenever -- i think it was august or september, and we met in closed session, you asked me to present you six months in and give you an update as to where we are with our annual action plan. so i'm going to do that today. and i'm thankful to rose who helped me put it together but

also who is going to change over the slides. can we get this on the -- does everybody have it up on their screen? okay. so our strategic plan goals, if you go to the -- well, never mind. our strategic plan goals are in front of you so maintain a robust network of community-based services for older people and adults with disabilities, protect older people and adults with disabilities from abuse, neglect and financial exploitation,

provide and support consumer-centered programming to best address client needs, expand planning and evaluation efforts to ensure best use of resources and maximize client outcomes and then support and develop and engage professional workforce that is prepared to work with older people and adults with disabilities. so our progress to date, so our progress to date is that we have started 48 actions that are currently in progress, and we have 14 actions remaining that will be started in the second half of the fiscal year. so basically we have 62 actions that we said that we would complete during this fiscal year, and we are well into that. and one of the things that i'm not going to go through every single action, because that would take all morning, and

president serina would not appreciate that. [laughter] >> it's difficult to contain my enthusiasm. >> right? but i did want to talk about a few highlights. and so i'm going to go goal by goal and just kind of highlight one or two things in each goal. so goal one, strategy c if you have your plan in front of you, strategy c is to strengthen san francisco's caregiver network, including enhanced support for informal caregivers and supporting a robust provider workforce. our action was to strengthen processes to enroll and support ihss independent providers. previously the service center was operating in a small office with really inadequate space and we used to have lines down the street, even in the rain and things like that. so this is really better. and it's also better because our

service center, being able to serve providers as well as clients is really exciting and having everybody in one place really makes sense, so providers can learn about other services. often providers are people who might need our services in other ways. and so it's helpful to have that. we have completed the transition to group orientation which provides a much more efficient process. we used to do it one by one, and we really didn't need to do that. and we are currently working with i.t. to build a texting system so that we can text people messages and things like that. we are aiming to have the system functional by the end of the fiscal year. and the texting system we have started using with some of our medical programs and it's proven to be popular. so while not everybody appreciates texts or gets their news or information that way, we find that it's really helpful for a lot of our providers.

and goal two, develop specialized resources or strategies to develop specialized resources to address specific client needs and resolve complex cases including high-risk conditions, self-neglect behaviors and financial abuse. our action was to launch the san francisco home safe program. so home safe launched in july 1 with $773,000 in funds from the state. it's a partnership of adult protective services, the homeless department and the institute on aging. a.p.s. and the institute on aging provide case management and purchase of services for clients who are at risk. bay they focus on people at risk of homelessness due to self neglect, particularly those coming through the homeless department. quarterly meetings to support this implementation and to help build and expand upon the partnership. in the first six months, 25

individuals were enrolled and were on track with our proposal to the state. our anticipated service levels for the two-year pilot are 120 clients. and so the program's going smoothly so far. then goal three is to strategy c is to ensure programs are culturally appropriate for the diverse low-income adults and adults with disabilities, including the first lgbtq aging out of the closet. and action was in partnership with the office of transgender initiatives to identify and fund services to support transgender older adults and people with disabilities. so d.a.s. and the office of transgender initiatives held stakeholder meetings to discuss potential services, which i think was really valuable for

us. and this is a community that we are really learning about and of course a community that has very, very diverse needs. and also is a community that is extremely at risk as probably many of you know and read about or you have friends who experience what it's like to be transgender in san francisco or anywhere, and so we really wanted to learn what do people need, how do people feel safe, how can we really help this population, especially the population of older adults. the focus on services and resources that support connection and engagement, because that's what people really wanted. we put out an r.f.p., the process has been completed, and we have two contracts coming to you later this morning. we are excited about that. while we are going to continue figuring out what the needs of this community are, we feel like this is a really great start. and from our understanding, this is the first of this type of

initiative in the country. and then goal four, strategy c, was to facilitate planning processes and implementation of efforts to promote inclusion of older adults and people with disabilities within the broader city community. action two, launch a san francisco reframing aging campaign to reframe public perception of aging. many of you were involved in this with us, so it's been great. i think the community has really taken up the cause of reframing the campaign ran from october through december with public messaging and advertisements and hopefully all of you saw them through the the city. i think our media people did a great job of distributing the wall scapes and the light poles and all the things across the city. but we also had a robust social

media piece too. we are now reflecting on the campaign and really thinking about what the next steps are. we had 3700 people so far take the pledge to end ageism online. we still have more coming in. i talked to people this week who said they were going to take the pledge. i'm not sure if they have, but that's continuing to build momentum. we will be reconvening a stakeholder group to discuss phase 2, focused on increasing public awareness of services. if you remember our first phase was to reach out to the general public and say ageism exists, let's think about this together. and then the next phase is to say hey, atmosphere there are services here that are -- also there are services here that are really great that an older adult could use, all of that. and that's where we are now. and then the goal five was to --

sorry, strategy b was to explore strategies to develop and operationallize an equity framework. our action in this case that we are highlighting is train adult protective services on principles of trauma-informed systems and create a staff-driven committee to create a plan for applying principles and practice. so staff have been trained on trauma-informed systems and d.a.s. has two certified trainers on staff. a.p.s. started a trauma-informed system staff group to implement the principles. the real reason we did this, and this is a movement across the country, but in san francisco, it's being rolled out across the department of public health, and we want to do this in the same way with our direct services staff. and staff are working with people who experienced much trauma and are reexperiencing that trauma. and staff experience secondary

trauma. some of them have experienced trauma in their life as well and they are dealing with people in trauma all the time. and it's like how do we give staff the tools to really handle that in the way that it's healthy for them and where they are taking care of themselves and where we are helping to take care of each other. so it's been really -- i think staff have had really -- i think positive reaction to the training, and we are working through how to really bring some of these principles into practice, because it's complicated, and people are really businessy and -- busy, but it's important to maintain a healthy climate with our staff. and so in our areas of focus january to june, so we are always using the community needs assessment to help inform where we need to move.

we have thought a lot about equity issues in san francisco and how we serve people who are serving, who we are not. so one of the things that we learned from the community needs assessment is that latino caregivers, adults with disabilities and lgbtq and communities of color are not using our services -- sometimes not using our services in the same way. so we want to convene community leaders to discuss service utilizeation and equity concerns and really get good strategies from the community about how to do better outreach and maybe how to either design new programs or at least make our programs more accessible for the broader community, and we really have good information. and i want to thank rose and her team for doing the deep dives they did so we have the information and we can say now we know who we need to talk to, and we are going to convene those groups. we have a focus on strengthening outcome object is in partnership

with our community partners. just had a conversation about this this morning. i think it's complicated because we are asking people to collect data. we want to know, of course, that our programs are impacting people in the deepest and in the best way possible, and yet we are asking our community partners sometimes to collect more data or use the systems. how do we balance all of those things together and to get to the best understanding of what impact our programs are having out there. deep dive reports, we have had some great information, but we will be looking at legal services trends in asian-pacific islander populations specifically, establish the community-based conservatorship unit to implement the program we have been talking about and you have been reading about in the paper, and conduct public information campaign and develop enhanced outreach path for the community to increase awareness

of services, which i just mentioned. so that's kind of the big to do in our second half of our year. >> thank you. any comments or questions for shireen? martha? >> especially around -- first of all, thank you for the work you did around trying to save as many classes as you could. it seemed like the most appropriate things to do was save the ones that have to do with our senior centers. will the goal of trying to get more of these classes back or that be incorporated into our overall goals? and they sort of are. so i get that they fit into many of our objectives, but i'm just wondering if there will be a strategy for that to try and identify ones that might be good for our new model, that kind of thing, and try to bring more into the senior centers? i'm not asking for a specific

answer today but just kind of in this context will there be some work on that? >> i think there are going to have to be conversations around what fits best into our community services bucket. so right now, we have preserved these classes for three years. and i'm sure there will be many discussions in the community about what the best approach is and all of those things. right now -- and we didn't do actually any research about where classes should be. we just said right now we are going to preserve the classes where they are. and there has to be a lot more conversation, but it's a good question. >> i imagine so. so thank you for that work. >> thank you. the issue of secondary trauma is a huge one. and i'm just wondering, the training program, is that coming out of the department of public health? what resources are we drawing on? >> yeah, the department of public health took the lead on it and continue to. there are other resources they

have brought in. they have brought in consultants to work with them but initially the money was from them, but we can also support it and will continue to. >> thank you. >> shireen, thank you, that was very comprehensive and a great deal has been done. i have a few comments or questions. regarding a.p.s., have we developed -- we have some programs, and have we been able to enhance the programs that reach out to banks and neighbors and law enforcement if they spot any potential signs of abuse? because often they see them first before they become apparent to other people. >> so, yes, and i'm going to ask joel, deputy director who oversees a.p.s. and ihss and the guardianship programs to answer that question >> thank you. >> i did not see you. our a.p.s. director. >> good morning. adult protective services.

we provide training on reporting to them. we also have a financial abuse unit, and we work with law enforcement. and we are also participating in a pilot where we are engaging, interacting with banks so they can report directly to us, some of these concerns, so we can take immediate action on those reports. >> thank you. it's very important. and as i said, often the last to know are the people who are immediately affected or most concerned. and often the abuser is a relative. so it's very challenging. but thank you. a couple of other questions. while we were -- just last week, the mayor's office announced budget cuts. and we have a very ambitious

slate of programs, many of which are new or expanded. and do we have any sense yet of how the suggested budget cuts or recommended budget cuts will affect us? >> so i think as you know, commissioner, usually because we are h.s.a., and we have a large agency budget, we have those conversations across the three departments of the agency. so we have not yet had that conversation. part of it is i have not had that conversation and part of it is because i was out sick when we were meeting. but we will definitely be thinking strategically about how we do that. one of the things when we think about the expansion of programs is because of the growth of the dignity fund, and at this point the dignity fund is not touched by those cuts. it could be at some point, but

right now that's not on the table. and so we can continue working with the money that we have. and so we are doing that. >> i know the dignity fund at the moment looks like it's going to be preserved. but it can change. there's always wiggle room. okay. well, thank you. any other comments? commissioner loo. >> i read in the paper that the city is asking for funds to help with the community college classes. is that true? and also would there be a continuation? >> that's what i was referring to as the money we used one-time only money, and we are spending it over three years. but it's one-time only money. so it's not money that is allocated into the future. we already had an allocation plan that has already been approved. the four-year allocation plan that we brought before you.

so this is money that didn't get spent in this fiscal year that we are able to structure over three years. so it's the $216,000 per year over three years. yes. it's for the classes that are specifically at the senior centers that we fund. that's what that is. >> okay. and in the future, if the city can't come up with the money, and they will ask us to use -- to get the dignity fund to help out -- i'm just asking a question. >> a very good question. it's an ongoing conversation. >> thank you. >> thank you very much, shireen. thank you, commissioners. the next item on the agenda is employee recognition, the daas commission. thank you, rose. the daas commission and executive director shireen mcspadden about honor maria morabe from the d.a.s. office of in-home support services.

>> come on, maria. >> you look so excited. [laughter] so excited to be honored today. come on up. >> thank you. >> it's all good. so, all right. so maria is from in-home supportive services. and i would love for all the in-home supportive services staff to stand if possible. [applause] so ihss is d.a.s.'s biggest program. and it's literally over half of our staff. and one of the things i've learned about ihss over the years i've been here is that things are never static, right?

you think you have caring, or you are doing intake or you are doing reception or you are doing clerical work, and that's your job, but actually what happens is there's change constantly. the state is always saying now do it this way, now do it this way. so one of the big things we are doing this year is electronic verification and that is a huge change. because i know i'm preaching to the choir but i'm actually saying this for the public, and that's that electronic verification is a huge change for providers and for clients. and it means that people who hadn't used electronic devices before have to learn to use them. and in san francisco, we know that a lot of older people and people with disabilities are victims of the digital divide and they didn't get brought along when the rest of us did.

and there are a lot of people in the community doing a lot of work around that, but we are suddenly hit with this need to put 45,000 people onto this new system. and so i want to thank all the ihss staff and also our contractors who work with ihss like the public authority and home bridge, for coming together and working on this. it's a huge lift. but we are going to get there. so with crista's leadership, we are definitely going to get there. so, maria, i wanted to say that first because i know that you have been honored and you are being honored this month in the midst of all this work that is happening around you. and you have risen to the top. so i'm going to read what your coworkers have said about you. okay? so maria morabe is a very exemplary and professional employee who is worthy of being

recognized as employee of the month. she knows her job well, is highly organized and managing her time effectively and consistently performs a large volume of work accurately and in a timely manner. she works very well with her peers and takes interest in learning and shares her learning with her peers. you have a great attitude and treat providers and recipients with compassion, dignity and respect, providing them high-quality customer services while addressing their unique individual needs. in addition, she has been designated by the ipac supervisor to train existing and new. what does it stand for? >> independent provider assistance >> how to process moment verification. she has coached her peers and equipped them with how to process different kinds of employment verifications. so you are highly regarded by your peers