Seattle City Council Public Safety and Human Services Committee Meeting 8823

Thank you so much.

Good morning.

It is 9.31 a.m.

on August 8th, 2023. The meeting of the Public Safety and Human Services Committee will come to order.

I'm Lisa Herbold, Committee of the Chair.

Chair of the Committee, will the clerk please call the roll?

Council Member Mosqueda.

Present.

Council Member Nelson.

Present.

Council Member Peterson.

Present.

Vice Chair Lewis.

President?

Chair Herbold?

Here.

Five present.

Thanks so much.

On today's agenda, we have four items.

We will hear the appointment of Josh Sattler as the Court Administrator of the Seattle Municipal Court.

We're also going to be receiving the one-year report from the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline serving King County.

We'll be hearing from the Human Services Department and King County on both the Seattle Community Safety Initiative and the King County Regional Approach to Gun Violence.

And then we're going to be receiving quarter one and quarter two metrics from Human Services Department and the Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion Program and COLEAD.

That will be the last item on our agenda for today, and with that, we will move to approve our agenda for today's committee meeting.

If there is no objection, today's agenda will be adopted.

Hearing and seeing no objection, today's agenda is adopted.

At this time, we'll transition into public comment.

I'll moderate the public comment period in the following manner.

Each speaker is given two minutes to speak.

I will alternate between virtual and in-person public commenters if there are both, but it appears that there's only virtual commenters today.

I will call on each speaker by name and in the order in which they registered on the council's website and on the sign-in form.

If you have not yet registered to speak but you'd like to do so, you can sign up before the end of the public comment session.

Once I call the speaker's name, if you are using the virtual option, you will hear a prompt.

And once you've heard that prompt, we ask that you press star six.

That is necessary for you to unmute yourself.

We ask that you please begin by stating your name and the item which you are addressing.

Speakers will hear a chime when 10 seconds are left of the allotted time.

Once you hear that chime, we request that you wrap up your comments.

If speakers do not end their comments at the end of the allotted time provided, the speaker's mic, unfortunately, will have to be muted after 10 seconds to allow us to hear from the next speaker.

Once you complete your public comment, we ask that you disconnect from the line.

and encourage your continuance following the meeting, and you can do so via the Seattle Channel or the listening options on the agenda.

We've got three people signed up for public comment.

Three are virtual, and there are none signed up to speak in person.

So, we will start with the speakers signed up.

First, Howard Gale, followed by John Schiff.

Good morning.

Howard Gale with seattlestop.org.

Since today may well be the last time a member of the public can comment on things not on the City Council agenda, let me take this opportunity to point out that the things that fail to get on Council agendas are sometimes more important and revealing than those that do.

For example, things that never made the Public Safety Committee agenda.

OIG whistleblowers in 2019 and 2021. revelations of serious malfeasance by the Office of Inspector General investigators in 2021 and 2022, including the fact that an OIG investigator with a prior career as a cop rubber stamped hundreds of OIG audits and OPA investigations.

Failures of the CPC to do their federally court mandated duties to investigate patterns of inadequate OPA investigations and patterns of abuse by the SPD, most notably the unrelenting patterns of shooting and killing those experiencing a behavioral health crisis.

That never made it onto an agenda.

The failure of the S.P.

of the C.P.C. for over six years to investigate and propose as mandated by the ordinance an appeals process for people abused by police when the O.P.A. investigations are improper.

The failure of the C.P.C. for over six years to investigate and propose also as mandated by the ordinance investigating alternatives to the S.P.D. doing their own internal investigations in cases of the use of deadly force.

And then we have the failure to ever hold OPA, OIG, or CPC department heads responsible for corruption and malfeasance.

The failure to have hearings or ask questions concerning SBDs near shooting of an unarmed black teen just last February.

The failure for seven months of having any monthly reports on the failed affected persons program despite that requirement being in legislation.

And most recently, the failure to address Real Change News' revelation Federal court monitor serves the interest of the SPD, not the interest of actual police accountability.

These are things that never made it onto an agenda.

Your next speaker is John Schiff.

John is showing as not present, so we'll move down to David Haynes.

And if Mr. Schiff's status changes, we'll hear from him after Mr. Haynes.

Go ahead, Mr. Haynes.

Thank you, David Haynes.

Why is City Council still going out of their way to sabotage the integrity of police reform?

They're using more tax dollars to pay off people who are totally unqualified to judge people based on their criminal repeat offending drug problems.

And the whole time, you're not requiring the police to question all of these junkie thieves and repeat offenders to find out where they got the drugs to go shut it down.

In fact, thanks to City Council, if you sell drugs and you do some drugs, You're exempted from jail, no need for bail, go straight to housing and services, while innocent households are still suffering from racist discrimination.

And yet we have community safety who's totally failed the community, who keeps running interference for troubled souls who repeat offense.

This council leadership has tripped progress into a societal mess, attempting to manipulate skin color percentages at the expense of judging content of character.

We really need new, trustworthy leaders.

You all have undermined public safety repeatedly.

Thank you.

Our last public speaker is still showing not present.

I'm going to call for Mr. John Schiff.

Let's see if that status changes.

John Schiff.

Okay, John is still not showing as present, so with that, we will conclude our public comment period and move into our items for today.

Mr. Clerk, can you please read in item number one?

Item one, appointment 02581, appointment of Josh Sattler as court administrator, Seattle Municipal Court.

Thank you so much.

Folks, come join us at the table, please.

And as we're joined at the committee table by our presenters, I'll start with some introductory remarks.

We're joined today by the Seattle Municipal Court presiding Judge Faye Chess to present an appointment of Mr. Josh Sattler as court administrator of the Seattle Municipal Court.

The Seattle Municipal Court requires a court administrator be appointed by the judges of the Seattle Municipal Court subject to confirmation by a majority of the city council.

The court administrator guides a staff of 200 employees to coordinate all administrative and operational functions of the Seattle Municipal Court as the court's operations executive.

This work includes leading much of the court's internal diversity, equity, and inclusion work, leading strategic initiatives, and allocating resources for efficient function of the courts.

Mr. Sattler has been serving as interim court administrator for about a year now.

The latest role in his nine years of service with the Seattle Municipal Court.

With that, I will hand it over to Presiding Judge Chess to present the appointment.

Thank you.

Okay.

Good morning.

I am Faye Chess, presiding judge of Seattle Municipal Court, and I am pleased to introduce you to Josh Sadler, who I have appointed to the role of court administrator with the support of and the recommendation of Seattle Municipal Court Executive Leadership Team.

Seattle Municipal Court and the City of Seattle are fortunate to have a well-positioned leader ready to lead the court during an extraordinary time of significant organizational change and challenge.

Josh was the finalist in our most recent court administrator recruitment, and as you just heard, has served the court for nine years in several leadership positions, and most recently has served as interim court administrator since August 2022. I chose to appoint Josh in lieu of a formal recruitment because the court is at a critical time with several major initiatives that we must ensure are completed successfully without delay.

We are nearing our go-live date for a new municipal court information system, a $60 million investment, completing a court-wide reorganization negotiating five labor contracts, and facing a likely significant city budget deficit in 2025-2026.

As the interim court administrator, Josh has successfully moved the court forward, established a strategic vision and priorities, while shoring up leadership capacity, governance, principles, and improving communication throughout the court, reestablishing trust, and improving employee and stakeholder engagement.

So we are here to ask for your support in moving his appointment to the full council.

Thank you.

Mr. Sattler.

Thank you very much for having me this morning.

This is a tremendous honor for me, and I really appreciate the support and confidence of Judge Chess and the Seattle Municipal Court judges.

Thank you.

Turning to my colleagues, any questions?

I have a few, but I'll go ahead.

All right, great.

Thank you.

So, yeah, just a few questions to get a little bit of a conversation going on here.

If you could just maybe speak a little bit, you have been filling the role for, I think we said nine months now.

I'm just wondering, are there opportunities for improvement that you have observed since you've been playing this role?

Absolutely.

I mean, I started this role in the midst of quite a turbulent cascade of changes, as Judge Chess outlined, and we chose to see a lot of those changes through, including an entire reorganization of our executive leadership team.

We used to have an 11 member executive leadership team, we've condensed that down to four.

We've completely reorganized the areas of court operations into four more streamlined, less siloed areas.

We continue to look at case flow as we come out of the pandemic.

And like Judge Chess said, we're about to see through a sizable technology investment by the city that goes live in March 2024 with our case management system.

Right now we're operating on a homegrown case management system from the 1980s.

This is new technology that will help us dramatically change the way we deliver service to the public.

And can you speak to how this new case management system will be something that people can experience the difference?

Sure.

Internally facing, I mean, for our new employees who start at the court, it is tough for them to learn a DOS-based computer system from the 1980s.

They'll have a much more streamlined user experience.

In terms of serving the public, what we've done throughout this entire process is put a customer-centric lens on the services, starting with how they view files online, how they can access court documents, We've started to build videos that accompany the case management system, such as our infraction process.

What does it look like to come to court for an infraction?

Really thinking about how, especially in a remote setting, customers access justice through the municipal court.

Fantastic.

Thank you.

And then the last question I had prepared is if you could just speak a little bit to how you approach organizational management and how you would describe your leadership style.

Organizational management or organizational change management, sorry.

The latter, thank you.

Okay.

Well, luckily, this is something we've been creating as part of our new case management system.

But what we've realized is that the change is much broader than just the technology.

And we've started to incorporate all of that change into something that we've been calling a communication cascade.

which seeks to really engage the voices of everyone in the organization, to talk about the changes, to learn about the information, and then to deliver it in their own voice to their colleagues.

So that's something I'm really proud of.

In terms of management style, it's definitely a collaborative approach at the court, especially with our executive leadership team and the judges.

In coursework through the National Center for State Courts.

We talk a lot about productive pairs between a court administrator and a presiding judge.

I believe that extends throughout the entire court system.

We need to be on the same page.

And I see myself as a colleague with everyone else on our leadership team.

Thank you.

And I just, this isn't a question, it's a statement.

I really appreciate the work of everybody at Seattle Municipal Court as it relates specifically to a high priority project for this council, which is your probation evolution project.

I'm really excited to see the many months work, maybe even years at this point, coming to a conclusion and looking forward to hearing sort of the report out on that effort.

It's very exciting work and has the potential to create a lot of positive change for our community.

So thank you.

Checking to see if any of my colleagues have any questions.

Council Member Nelson.

I just want to say that Mr. Sattler and I both participate in the Mayor's Fentanyl Systems Workgroup together and your knowledge of of the history of the court and its proceedings and inspires a lot of confidence.

And in my meeting with presiding judge Chess the other day, she sang your praises.

So I have nothing but confidence that you're the right person for this job.

So I appreciate you stepping up.

I have a question about the court administrator position.

Has it always been an appointment, an appointed position?

Yes, it has always been an appointment by the presiding judge.

Okay.

Thank you very much.

Thank you very much for your service.

Thank you.

Thank you.

All right.

Any additional questions?

Not seeing any, either in person or virtually.

Calling one more time.

All right.

With that, I'd like to move appointment 02581 for passage.

Is there a second?

Second.

Thank you so much.

I have no additional questions or comments just other than saying thank you for your service and thank you as well for willing to be formally selected and chosen for this new leadership role.

Appreciate that.

Thank you.

Thank you for your time.

We appreciate it.

Will the clerk please call the roll?

Council Member Mosqueda.

Aye.

Councilmember Nielsen?

Aye.

Councilmember Peterson?

Aye.

Vice Chair Lewis?

Yes.

Chair Herbold?

Yes.

Five yes.

Thank you.

This appointment moves on to full council on August 15th and we can communicate between now and then about whether or not Mr. Sadler intends to be present.

He's welcome to, he's not required to, but happy to have him to be present and formally accept the final vote.

Thank you.

Mr. Clerk, can you please read in item number two?

Agenda item two, 988, suicide and crisis lifeline serving King County, year one report.

All right, great.

Thank you.

As we are being joined to the table, a couple introductory remarks.

We're going to be joined by Michelle McDaniel, the Chief Executive Officer of Crisis Connections.

Our presentation today will touch on the crisis continuum of care related to 988 and behavioral health.

The first point on a crisis response continuum is that call for help, whether it's to 9-1-1 or 9-8-8, the new nationwide 24-7 phone number to call for behavioral health centers is Health Crisis is 988, and it is celebrating its first year of operation this summer.

In June of last year, several partners from King County, as well as Michelle, joined us in this committee to discuss plans for the 988 launch.

So, it is Very appropriate that we are back here again to find out how that went and where we're planning to go.

The number itself is, of course, an easy-to-remember hotline.

It's intended to connect people in crisis to compassionate, accessible care and support for anyone experiencing mental health distress, whether thoughts of suicide, mental health, or substance use crisis.

And people can also dial 988 if they're worried about a loved one who may need crisis support.

The federal vision behind 988 goes beyond someone to talk to.

In the long term, 988 will be built out to also include someone to respond, such as rapid crisis response services for people in behavioral health crisis, as well as some place to go, meaning places for people in crisis to stay and recover while receiving treatment.

Washington State is ahead of other states in 988 implementation.

Thankfully, we were one of only four states to rapidly enact a 988 infrastructure bill complete with funding.

This was back in 2021. Earlier this year, I had the privilege of testifying in support of House Bill 1134 from Representative Orwal, endorsing 988 rapid response crisis teams, recommendations for training and liability protections.

That law went into effect last month.

Appreciate that our state legislators continue to lead the way on implementation of the full 988 vision.

With that, pass it on to Michelle McDaniel.

Thank you.

Thank you very much for that introduction, Councilmember Herbold, and good morning to the entire council.

I'm very pleased to be sharing with you our one-year report for 9 at 8. Again, I'm Michelle McDaniel.

I'm the CEO of Crisis Connections, and I'm going to provide you a little bit of background about our organization.

before we launch specifically into the presentation with the update.

And I'm going to attempt to move the slides forward.

There we go.

What we'll discuss today, of course, is an overview of the 90-day system, its role within the crisis behavioral health system, as well as, of course, the year one report about how it's going within Washington State as well as King County and Seattle.

I'll talk a little bit as well around how we're doing coordination work.

between 9-1-1 and 9-8-8.

And then we're now in year two of the 9-8-8 program.

So we will be able to give you an update on what is ahead for this year.

And I'll leave some time for questions and answers.

So very briefly, my organization has been operating since 1964. We are a nonprofit organization.

We have been operating crisis lines for a very long time.

In fact, we are offering the 24-hour crisis line for King County.

It's the second oldest crisis line in the United States.

But as you can see on this slide here, we offer many programs that are focused on helplines, text, or chat.

And that includes, of course, covering the King County as well as eight other counties in Washington State as a 24-hour crisis line.

I'll also call out King County 2-1-1, which we launched in 2006, for information referral.

We're really pleased to be a provider of a program we call One Call that particularly Councilmember Herbalt has been a champion for.

This is a dedicated line for our first responders in King County and Seattle to be able to call in route or when they get to the scene of a situation where it appears that there may be a behavioral health component.

They can talk directly with one of our behavioral clinicians to get support on that call.

And again, many other programs that also cover across Washington state is our focus as a behavioral health nonprofit.

I wanted to also provide context, as Councilmember Hurd-Bolt mentioned.

We fit in, my organization, our services within a larger continuum of care for crisis services.

And so with this slide, just an opportunity to give you context about where crisis connections and similar programs are.

fit in.

At the extreme left is the least restrictive option for people who are experiencing a mental health or substance use disorder crisis.

And that's a 24-hour crisis line.

And so from there, we move to the right.

You can see we have items that are in a little bit darker teal.

Those are services that are required by the behavioral health ASOs to provide in every region of Washington state.

So a 24-hour crisis line is required, a mobile outreach team.

which my organization is one of the few organizations and services that can dispatch mobile crisis teams.

Of course, then what we call the most restrictive, the four walls of an involuntary or voluntary psychiatric inpatient.

So those are the required throughout the state.

And the lighter green are those that are optional.

And so one of the lessons here is that throughout the state, there is a wide variety of behavioral health resources, depending on what part of the state you live in.

Within King County, we have some of the most robust, and that includes next day appointments for people who are in need to see someone in person or virtually, and so on and so forth.

Crisis connections in our role is really the front door to this whole continuum of care and are able to dispatch or recommend or be able to connect people to so many of these resources that you see here.

That is happening I must mention is again in context of 9-8-8 is just one part of building out our behavioral health system.

It has been under resourced for many decades and we're seeing now a great amount of momentum across the state as well as the city and county to address the need to build out our crisis care system as people are in greater need in our community.

And so as you're aware the crisis care center levy was passed.

My organization was a big proponent of that to be able to have an opportunity for people to walk in just as if I had broken my arm and I needed to get immediate care.

We will have the opportunity for people who have behavioral health crises to be able to walk in.

And that crisis care levy then funds five of those walk-in centers.

There's also efforts to increase the mobile outreach capacity as well as designated crisis responders who are the people who are given the authority in an extreme situation to involuntarily commit someone for psychiatric reasons.

And then also we know that programs such as the Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion and other co-responding programs are being stood up.

We need all of those levers in order to really support the community.

And again, more context, there's a national vision around behavioral health and where the 9-8-8 system fits into.

9-8-8 and related crisis lines fall into having someone to talk to immediately.

Very low barrier resource.

Someone to respond, such as mobile crisis teams, and then also some place to go.

As I mentioned, one of those opportunities, of course, is the crisis care centers that will be stood up in King County.

So the 988 system, ultimately the 988 system is a change in phone number.

So we have had the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline across the country since 2005. My organization, Crisis Connections, has been one of the providers of that service since 2010. And so at a very simple level, this is changing what was a 10-digit phone number into a three-digit dialing number.

I will tell you in all honesty that I couldn't have told you off the top of my head what that 10-digit number was, which means that the average person in the United States wouldn't be able to recite that as well.

So part of this function of the U.S.

Congress passing the National Suicide Hotline Designation Act in 2020, which again gave the pathway to moving from a 10-digit to a 3-digit line, was really to reduce barriers for people accessing behavioral health across the country.

And so, as I mentioned, Crisis Connections is one of about 200 call centers, behavioral health call centers across the country that are answering this line.

Again, it's a free and confidential service 24-7, 365 across the country.

I will let you know that it was a national launch on July 16, 2022, but it was also what we would term a silent launch.

Not every community in the United States was truly prepared as we were in Washington State to launch this program.

So much of the marketing or publicity has been reactive, really, to media.

stories, you will now see in year two, as the system's getting more built out, you will start seeing some more marketing and some more visibility for this program.

And again, the point is to connect community members who are experiencing mental health, substance use, or suicidal crisis with a trained crisis counselor.

Within Washington State, there are three providers of the 988 system.

Of course, Crisis Connections, but also our partners over at Frontier Behavioral Health, which as you can see from the map here, are supporting Eastern Washington, and then Volunteers of America of Western Washington.

Crisis Connections, we are the first line for those calling from a King County area code.

It's important to note right now there is not a geolocation function for 98Nationally, meaning, as we know, people are quite mobile and may not change their phone number.

So if somebody is calling 98 from a 206 area code and they happen to be in Prescott, Arizona, they're going to be routed to the Crisis Connections Call Center.

That being said, it's a network across the country and if for some reason in the support that our team is providing, we need to connect them to local resources, we have the ability to do that very easily and do a warm handoff.

We have a team right now of 45 bachelor's degrees, degreed clinicians, and master's level staff that operate the 988 crisis line for crisis connections.

And all of those staff members are remote.

One of the ways that we have been able to manage the workforce crisis within human services and specifically behavioral health is to be able to offer the opportunity for remote work.

That has been quite successful, but it allows us to have employees and people answering this line across the country.

Specifically, we have employees in Texas, Arizona, New York, Mississippi, and Ohio that are answering the phone.

when the 988 rings, and again, they are highly trained in being able to be able to connect to local resources.

That has not been a barrier.

So what happens when you call 988?

Well, first, there's a phone tree to be able to connect you to specific specialized services.

So again, it's when 988 is dialed, it goes to the national call distribution.

service which is operated by an organization called Vibrant Behavioral Health.

So they are contracted with the federal government to provide essentially the backend routing services and also make sure that there is criteria for all 9-8-8 call centers must adhere to and standards.

So that call is routed first to that general switchboard, and you will get an automated answer.

And that will offer you opportunities to press 1, to be connected to the Veterans Crisis Line, 2, to receive your services from 9 and 8 in Spanish, as well as connecting if you dial If you press three, to the Trevor Project for those who are LGBTQ plus populations, but under 25 years old will be connected to the Trevor Project.

And then something exclusive to Washington State is we also operate the Native and Strong Lifeline.

So as I mentioned before, there's 398 providers in Washington State.

Volunteers of America has stood up the nation's first and only helpline dedicated to our Alaska Native and American Indian population.

So we're very proud of that, and we hope that that's replicated in other states.

Also, the opportunity, of course, for people who need to utilize the relay service, and then there's a text and chat function to the 988 service.

So you'll start seeing, like I mentioned, some outward marketing to be able to create more awareness as other communities have been able to build up their 988 capacity.

It's a safer situation that call centers throughout the country will not be overwhelmed.

And you'll start seeing some marketing such as this ad right here.

So what are the top reasons so far that people are contacting 9-8-8?

So the first probably wouldn't surprise you.

Those are people who are reporting suicidal ideation or to the next extent have a specific plan.

We have quite a few people, probably about 30% that call because they're seeking help for someone else.

They're a teenager, a parent, a spouse.

We also have a high number of folks that are calling because they need de-escalation from a behavioral health crisis.

Sometimes it's simply just an empathetic, compassionate listening ear of what people are seeking, and then also connections to resources.

As you've heard, we are able to be that compassionate listening ear.

About 80% of the calls that we take, we are able to resolve at that level.

So another 20% or so are we bringing in additional resources to support folks and really try to prevent the next crisis.

So deescalate the crisis at hand and then prevent the next crisis.

I wanted to go briefly into the, what I call the anatomy of a 988 call, just to give you a sense and flavor of the focus.

And again, this should look very similar across the country.

But for us, what you can expect in particular is, as I mentioned, less than a minute you will be, the phone will be picked up by the recording and you will have the options as I listed earlier.

It'll actually get to a human being, a real live person, within 30 seconds.

And that is one of the standards for 9-8-8.

So for my organization, we are able to pick up the phone and get a live answer about 90% of the time, between 90 and 95% of the time, within 30 seconds or less.

And this is where the counselor is going to hear the client's story assessed for safety.

Again, this is, of course, a suicide prevention resource, so it's not uncommon for people to be experiencing suicidal thoughts or, again, putting together a plan.

So they're going to be listening for the story and just assessing.

And then this is a really important part, and this is about building rapport.

We want this to be a safe, accessible resource for all.

And so they're going to explore the situation.

And what we're looking for is to make sure that we have folks that are able to assess the need, but also let's utilize people's strengths.

You know, we really want to leverage the resiliency that everyone has and their natural supports.

And again, continuing to listen and assessing for safety.

This is where also maybe assessments for potential domestic violence, abuse, and things like that may occur.

And then really wrapping up the call, work with client to collaborate to establish safety and resolve the issues.

And again, I won't read all of this, but, you know, developing coping strategies, really engaging the caller.

We are not, 988 is not an advice line.

It again is to try to engage people in figuring out the navigating through the crisis and also preventing the next crisis.

There's an opportunity as well to do follow-up calls and so we use peer counselors in order to follow up with someone.

two days later, a day later, if they would like, see how they're doing with their coping strategies, if they were able to connect to resources.

And that's a newer feature in crisis lines in general, to be able to have a peer counselor call back and make sure that this was a successful intervention and find out if they need more support or different support.

And then, again, for 80% of the calls, we'll have the opportunity to close out the call.

Always invite them to call back any time.

Make sure their emotional state is stable.

And then move on to the next call.

So some outcomes for 9-8-8.

The most common outcome is that we've been successful in deescalating and that there's no threat to themselves or others.

This includes also safety concerns established using least restrictive interventions.

As I shared before, there's a whole continuum of care.

We're always looking for the least restrictive option for people in order to support them, such as a next day appointment, potentially a mobile crisis team coming out to their home, so forth.

Referral to community resources and follow-up services I mentioned, mobile crisis team, and in more serious cases, a designated crisis responder if we feel there may be a possibility where someone needs to be involuntarily committed for psychiatric services and care.

And again, that's less than 5% of all interactions.

And then the last is first responder intervention, meaning that there may be a life safety situation that we're not able to resolve.

quick question on this slide.

Could you just give us a sense of the difference between the category on this, the outcome category on this slide for referrals to a mobile crisis team or designated crisis responder and the two percent that are referred to a first responder?

Just like a sense of what makes the difference of whether or not there's the former outcome and the latter outcome.

whether or not for the first responder intervention.

Is that exclusive to fire police and paramedic or is it broader than that.

Great.

So I'll address the first question which is essentially when our clinicians are assessing the if there is additional services needed.

What distinguishes recommending a mobile crisis team or a designated crisis responder or something more immediate like EMS or fire or police.

It's really about the the caller, are they cooperating?

Are they safety planning with us?

Are they able to bring in other people within their circle to help support them?

There is a lot of art as well as a little bit of science to this and the best practices around crisis intervention.

If we have a situation where someone, for example, is expressing very clearly suicidal thoughts, has a plan, has a means, and is not safety planning with us, is not actively working to move to resolve it, that would be one of those very rare statistically situations where we would be bringing in 911. in reaching out to them.

The 9-8-8 call centers are not able to trace any calls, nor do we want to.

We are able to get caller ID, and in the most extreme case, would dispatch out 911. But really, it's such a rare part of what happens in the intervention, but it does occasionally happen.

And that really is truly when we have concern about someone's safety, either themselves or others, and they're not collaborating with us and not resolving.

Thank you.

And then I'm going to invite you, I think I know the answer to this question, but the referral to community resource or follow-up service, I invite you to speak to the capacity and the access that you have to those necessary services.

Absolutely.

So when there is a determined need for additional services, that's a struggle.

So I mentioned many times the mobile crisis teams are the designated crisis responders.

If we are determining and working with a caller to say, yes, I'm willing to have a mobile crisis response to my home to be able to work, and they come out in two-person teams as behavioral specialists, there may be very extensive wait times for that.

In the case right now for designated crisis responders, it could be days.

And that's a situation where we have determined that someone needs to be evaluated for service services, including the possibility of involuntary detainment.

So when we have lack of resources to be able to say, here's the next step, what ends up happening is, A, we're not helping to resolve the crisis.

We also find that people are utilizing crisis connection services as their mental health provider.

And again, we're the short-term crisis intervention again, trying to resolve it, but we end up maxing out our services.

You know, we've now exceed, we have nearly 675,000 contacts every year with the community.

You know, that's a threefold increase from, you know, eight years ago and particularly before COVID, a massive increase.

And so we experienced firsthand the lack of resources across that continuum and ends up putting people in more of a situation to receive services from us.

when really they need more intensive wraparound services.

Does that help answer your question?

Yes.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Some numbers for you, as I was just mentioning, we are also, you can see here, we have the launch date of July of 2022, and you can see a steady increase in calls.

So statewide, we're averaging 6,000 calls per month from the 988 line, 28% increase since launch compared to the prior month.

And then overall, we're trending 45%.

Call volume increased if we look at the same period, January through May.

So we are reaching people, which is wonderful.

But to my point earlier, the more people that are contacting 988 means statistically the more people that need additional services and support.

And when the rest of the continuum is not built out, it creates a crunch there.

One of the areas that we have been focusing on at Crisis Connections is to really package what I call the ecosystem of the continuum of care.

So we have, of course, 9-1-1 we've been talking about.

9-1-1 is an integral part of the continuum of care.

And then, of course, 2-1-1, which I mentioned before.

And this is a connection to resources.

And really want to make sure people understand that the 2-1-1 system, which It's not the topic today, but there's an area where we are really working hard to be able to adequately fund.

That is the prevention component of all of this.

Ultimately, what we would like to do, what I would like to do is see a decrease in calls to 988 over time because the need is not there at that crisis level.

It's being resolved earlier.

And building a strong two-on-one system, which is national, but does not have the funding that 9-1-1 and 9-8-8 have would be a tremendous asset in really making an impact in being able to support the community.

I just want to talk briefly about what are the different lanes, so to speak, between 9-1-1 and 9-8-8, and how do we work together.

The focus of 9-1-1 is to be able to assess very quickly and get the right resource out again in a very short period of time.

It's a prompt dispatch, and this is, as we are very familiar with, it's around life safety, fire, medical crime.

We have become inappropriately dependent on the 911 system, on EMS, on law enforcement, on fire to be able to respond because it is so quick.

And when there is a crisis and we need to be able to support people and there is a multi-hour or multi-day response within the behavioral health system, it often then escalates to a 9-1-1 call.

And so we want to divert that.

988 ideally will be a number of things, not just a quick response as far as being able to talk to someone, but we want to be able to make sure that we can get the additional resources out and stop this dependence on 9-1-1, which should be focused more on what is listed here.

And then in 988, as I mentioned before, it's about assessing its crisis resolution.

When we hear a term of suicide, it's a very different response when a 911 operator hears that, which is immediately, we need to get somebody on the scene.

When we hear that at 9-8, it's a cause for more questions and building rapport and understanding.

And again, it's about life safety, but for the most part, our clinicians are successful in being able to deescalate and not have to send out additional resources from the emergency system.

And then that crossover, like I said, less than 2% of calls that come in really get to that point where we do need to dispatch and include 911. And that is when someone is actively not working to deescalate a situation.

Just another question here.

May I?

Thank you.

Just another question in this area, and you may have covered it, but I feel the need to lift it up again because I have heard concerns about the fact that some people who are practitioners in this area believe that we're moving away from better integrating 9-1-1 with 9-8-8.

Understand, of course, that we want to make sure that the first, the right first responder shows up.

But I have been led to believe that there have been some specific steps that the state has taken to make that actually, that integration more difficult.

I'm wondering if you could speak to that a little.

Absolutely.

First of all, we recognize that 911 and law enforcement's response often is not the right response.

We have, again, relied a lot on our first responders to be social workers and be behavioral health clinicians.

We also recognize that, particularly for certain populations, there's a higher rate that the situation can be escalated versus de-escalated.

particularly in our communities of color, our black community in particular.

So we recognize that, accept that, own it.

And so we want to make sure, again, that the right response is dispatched.

And again, we need to partner with 911 and all first responders to be able to make sure that we are standardizing how we're interacting across the state between 9-1-1 and 9-8, make sure that the right call is made as to what to do next.

So we have done extensive work with the 9-1-1 leadership across the state to literally map out how we want the responses to go, educating our first responders on behavioral health, And it's not new to be partnering as Crisis Lines with 911. That's been happening since we started in 1964. But we're being more aware and methodical and thoughtful about how that interaction happens and that handoff.

And again, this is where programs like Crisis Connections One Call is really important, where we're actually able to provide information and coaching to first responders either on the way to a behavioral health situation or when they get on the scene.

So we have found that law enforcement in particular is really open to this engagement and this partnership.

Again, if we want to make a difference here and make sure that we are providing the right care and support and safe and accessible support to the community, we have to partner and work together to do that with first responders.

Thank you.

Nearly done with my presentation, and hopefully we have time for more questions.

Wanted to let you know now we're in year two of 9-8-8.

And so what is happening in Washington State?

As I've mentioned, there are three 9-8-8 providers, Crisis Connections being one of them.

Right now, if a call is not picked up within 30 seconds by one of the 9-8-8 crisis call centers across the country, it will be routed to a centralized backup system that I believe is primarily in New York.

We want to retain any calls that originate from Washington State area codes in Washington State.

So we are rolling out this fall a backup system.

So if a call to 988 to the area that crisis connections covers is not picked up within 30 seconds, the call immediately rolls over to one of our two partners.

either Frontier or Volunteers of America, and that will happen throughout the system.

So we are working on that.

It's really important that we have as local of a response as possible.

And then we're expanding the chat and text capacity that, as I mentioned before, is possible.

So crisis connections, we'll be adding that.

Right now, we've been focusing on answering the helpline.

We'll now be getting into offering our interventions through chat and text.

Right now, that's an increasing mode for people, particularly, as you can imagine, younger people feeling more comfortable and safe interacting with 9 and 8 through those options.

And then we will be launching early next year, co-location.

We will be embedding 988 clinicians into 911 PSAPs.

We will be likely starting with Valley Comm in South King County.

We have been in conversation, extensive conversation and meetings with Seattle 911. So that, again, we can have immediate response, support the 911 staff in knowing when to move a call to us.

And so we expect that we're going to have even stronger support intervention and, again, get the first response being the right response.

Thank you for mentioning that last effort about working towards co-location.

I think that's also an element that addresses some of the concerns I've heard about integration with 9-1-1, so that's very helpful.

Just looking to see among my colleagues, my online Viewing is temporarily.

Okay.

Just looking to see if there's any virtual hands here not seeing any Councilmember Nelson I might have misunderstood but did you say you're trying to back up all calls and I asked that because I'm wondering about your data storage capacity and for example, if a behavioral health professional wants to reach a one of the service providers to confer about someone who is seeking ongoing help, is that possible?

Great.

So let me first clarify what I meant by backup.

So the idea is that if a call comes in to crisis connections and we're not able to pick it up, it doesn't leave, that call doesn't get routed out of the state.

It stays within the state.

But to address your question about are we literally recording calls and so forth.

So again, we want to make sure that people understand and we honor the fact that as much as possible when we are operating crisis line that they are confidential and safe.

That's one of the hallmarks of people being able to call and feel comfortable.

Now, that being said, there's times where, again, we do collect information from the caller willingly because, yes, I'm willing to have a next day appointment, so we need information there.

And then the calls are recorded by Vibrant only for quality assurance, however.

We have very, very strict HIPAA laws that we subscribe to as well as for national call center.

So if we have a situation, though, where we, if your question, if I understand your question correctly, that we need to roll back the tape, for example.

We would only do that for the, to be able to assess whether or not we did the right intervention.

It would not be used in order to track an individual, but it would be used only to make sure that we were evaluating the response and whether or not it was adequate.

Thank you.

Any other questions or comments for CEO McDaniel?

Councilman Mosqueda.

Thank you so much.

Thanks for the update on this.

I know we're all excited about the opportunity as well in the future to be able to have 9-8-8 connect people with the alternative crisis responders, as the chair noted, with the hope that when people see somebody in crisis, they can know that someone without a badge and a gun might show up to have the ability to treat people that we're seeing you know experiencing crises on the street or in our communities on a regular basis so that's exciting to know that that's on the way and also just wanted to ask you if you could comment on whether or not if we're seeing somebody who is having a crisis right now if we should encourage them to call 988 or if we see somebody having a crisis that we should call 988 as a good way to try to get them direct services before calling 911. And then while I have the mic, I just want to thank you for your work.

I think the last time I saw you in person was when we were announcing collectively at King County in partnership with community partners, the proposition to bring the five crisis care centers to fruition and support for the workers who provide those services.

And your speech was really amazing and impressive, you know, to be able to remind people that you are working around the clock and still don't have the appropriate places to bring people to, to allow them to heal, was really moving and congratulations on a win and thanks again to the voters for supporting that effort.

You, I think, have made a tremendous impact by helping to bring that forward, so thank you so much.

Appreciate it, and thank you for your question.

Yes, we want people to call 988. We, in Washington State, as Council Member Herbalt mentioned, we're one of four states that have funded this resource, and so we have the capacity when to call 988. If this is an immediate life safety issue, if somebody is running in and out of traffic, somebody looks like they may harm themselves or others, That's a 911 call.

That's when you need to make sure there's an immediate response and that's the right resource at that time.

And so we want to make sure, as I mentioned, that we are diverting calls that have been going to 911 that are really more behavioral health.

But again, if you're determining, it's not up to the public to have to kind of do a mental gymnastic about which number should I call.

If you feel that there's an immediate safety risk, please call 9-1-1.

The other component of this, though, is again, as I mentioned, we are really working closely with 9-1-1 as a 988 provider to make sure that if a call does go into a different channel, there's no wrong door.

and we'll get the person to the right place.

But again, if it's a immediate life safety issues, harm to self or others, crime in progress, things like that, please, we do want the public to call 911. Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Thank you.

If there are no further comments or questions before you go, I just want to, again, thank you for everything that you've done to both stand up 988. Thank you for your advocacy on the One Call Project that I think is so critically important to help assisting first responders.

And thank you for your willingness to come back and speak to us today a year after your launch.

And I am also looking forward to joining you in a listening shift later this week, so that'll be great.

Very soon now, in just I think another couple months, the city will be launching its own dual dispatch program where both police officers and a new care team of behavioral health responders will come to the scene of certain calls.

Officers are not required to stay, but they are going to have situational awareness when the care team is dispatched.

And as we know, it's really important to have clearly defined response protocols.

So we're always sending the appropriate resources, but not just to only focus on who's responding, although that's very important, we also need to maintain the view and the reality that the need for help lasts longer than just the response.

I referenced the discussion going on in Washington State around the integration of 988 and 911. There is a recent landscaped analysis authored by professionals at the UW School of Social Work, which looks at the statewide behavioral health crisis continuum as presented to us here today.

There are a couple of recommendations coming out of that analysis.

analysis that I would really love to share with the public and committee members.

It does recommend that every single region of the state have co-response programs available as an essential crisis service.

And it also recommends that these co-response programs share information and closely collaborate with the 988-led behavioral health response systems, including call centers, mobile crisis teams, and crisis stabilization facilities.

I think those are really important recommendations for jurisdictions throughout the state to stay focused on.

I'm confident that we are focused on that integration here in King County.

The rollout of dual dispatch in another couple of months, and as Councilmember Mosqueda mentioned, the April approval of the King County Crisis Care Center's levy.

These are important milestones in revisioning how we think about crisis response, but integration will take time.

will require ongoing public attention and oversight, and developing not just the systems to respond, but the systems to continue to offer care as needed is something that's going to continue to need our focus.

And really, again, thank you so much for your work in this area.

Thank you so much for the opportunity.

Thank you for your support, Council.

Mr. Clerk, can you please read in item number three on our agenda?

Agenda item three, Seattle Community Safety Initiative and King County Regional Approach to Gun Violence.

Thank you, Mr. Clerk.

As people are joining us at the table, a few opening remarks.

I want to thank everyone for joining us here today to continue our ongoing conversation around community safety and the city's participation in the regional public health and data-driven approaches to addressing and preventing gun violence in our communities.

We've hosted many previous briefings on this issue over the last several years.

In 2021, we invited a panel of presenters from the Seattle Community Safety Initiative.

including some folks who are joining us this morning to share their approach to building community safety hubs in three Seattle communities.

And we've also received several briefings from the Human Services Department on $12 million supported by the City Council to provide support for and build community safety efforts.

Last year, we received briefings on gun violence prevention from multiple partners, including Public Health, King County, again, community passageways.

Human Services Department's Save and Thriving Communities Division and more.

We've learned about the Regional Domestic Violence Firearms Unit.

We've learned about the Harborview Medical Center Hospital-Based Intervention Program.

We've learned about the Youth Leadership Intervention and Change Program.

sometimes referred to as LINC, which I serve on the board for.

And we've heard about the regional approach to gun violence reduction and how it is the only regional effort in the nation.

selected to participate in an 18-month White House Community Violence Intervention Collaborative.

And we've heard from and learned a lot about the fantastic work of the Regional Peacekeepers Collective.

I really appreciate you joining us here today, this morning.

I do want to acknowledge that everyone joining us on this agenda item was impacted by a recent and shocking July 28th shooting at the Southeast Network Safety event.

I know that each of your organizations were engaged in some way.

either staffing the regular Friday night event to prevent gun violence and support healing or in responding to the aftermath that very evening.

I'm so grateful that there were no fatalities, but I recognize the trauma that you are all experiencing here with us today and the frightening and senseless injuries that many of you engaged in this work are recovering from still today.

I want to thank you again for joining us this morning to share your good work and your expertise despite this trauma.

And with that, I believe the Human Services Department will be starting us off to talk about the Seattle Community Safety Initiative.

Thank you.

Good morning.

Okay, great.

For the record, I'm Tanya Kim, Director of the Human Services Department.

Good morning.

I'm Annie Lee.

I'm the Interim Deputy Director for the Human Services Department.

Good morning.

I'm Dominic Davis, CEO of Community Passageways.

And Eleuthera, you're at table.

Do you want to just go ahead and introduce yourself?

Sure thing.

For the record, Eleuthera Lish, Director of the Regional Gun Violence Program for Public Health Seattle and King County.

Good morning.

That's right.

And we have a two-parter, and so we'll swap out, and Eleuthera can drive for the RPKC, Regional Peacekeepers Collective, conversation.

I don't want to take up too much time, but it was very important for me to join table today and just offer my appreciation to council, to the mayor's office, Chief Diaz and others, but more importantly I want to acknowledge, as you have already shared, the importance of our community partners and what they do on a day in and day out.

I think what's very unique, and Annie will describe the work itself, and CEO slash founder of Commute Passageways, Coach Dom will fill in the blanks, help us answer any questions, and really give voice to the work that's actually happening.

It was really important for me to show up because I also want to express The department's the city's commitment to the work and why this particular body of work is a little bit different is because it was Developed and birthed from community.

It's implemented by community and we are proud partners and supporting and trying to get out of Coach Dom's way, as well as our other partners.

And I need to acknowledge, and we'll go into more detail, but we do have some members and leaders of organizations here.

And so I want to recognize some important people sitting in chambers and hopefully might have a Hopefully nobody else has just walked in recently, and then I'll give voice to those who I think are working right now, too.

And so I want to acknowledge Marty Jackson specifically with the Boys and Girls Club of King County.

And I understand, as you had mentioned, the trauma.

really caring for her staff and prioritizing staff right now.

And so just thinking of her team, of course, Executive Director Chantelle Patu.

I also have to give a shout out to Paul as well with Urban Family for their work.

Marvin Marshall with the YMCA and no introduction, but again, Dom Davis with Community Passageways.

And so it is the work.

We are committed and really appreciate the opportunity to be here to talk about the model and a status update on outcomes and performance measures.

So thank you.

And with that, I'm going to be driving this and passing it over to Annie Lee.

Thank you, Director Kim.

Thank you, Director Kim.

Today, our agenda for our presentation is as follows.

We'll be introducing and giving some background on the SCSI initiative.

We'll also be talking a little bit about the partnership that SCSI has with SPD, the contracts and program focus areas, the metrics and program performance, and then we'll leave some time for questions.

So this slide may look familiar to the committee, but we include this information to center the conversation around our mission and six impact areas.

All right, we're having a little technical issues here.

Okay, get the slide.

This is what happens when I'm driving.

OK, well, I'll continue on.

HSD6 impact areas are preparing youth for success, supporting affordability and livability, addressing homelessness, promoting public health, supporting safe communities, and promoting healthy aging.

And so the Seattle Community Safety Initiative, or SCSI, falls within our Supporting Safe Communities impact area and within our Safe and Thriving Communities division.

Go ahead, next slide.

By way of background, in 2020, the City Council added $4 million to HSD's Seattle Community Safety Initiative.

In 2021, the Safe and Thriving Communities Division was created at HSD, combining existing and additional safety investments.

In 2023, the adopted budget included ongoing funding of $4.3 million for the SCSI work.

SCSI scales up gun violence intervention and prevention efforts by facilitating holistic, trauma-informed, and culturally meaningful supports by and for community to improve safety and well-being.

SCSI began with community passageways as a lead organization, subcontracting to three other agency hubs.

This year, working with our partners, we shifted to individual contracts, which gives additional flexibility to the partner agencies while still maintaining the collective approach.

The programs that make up SCSI include Community Passageways, the YMCA of Greater Seattle, the Boys and Girls Club of King County, and Urban Family Center Association.

Community Passageways continues to serve as a lead agency and directs policy, meets weekly with SPD, convenes systems meetings, and coordinates and manages data and reporting for all of the hub organizations.

SCSI's partnership with SPD includes a memorandum of understanding outlining mutual goals, types of incidents for SPD notification to community passageways and the SCSI group, on-scene protocol, and expectations for ongoing communication.

CP and SPD also meet weekly where they discuss shots fired information.

And immediately following that shots fired incident, the SCSI partners convene to discuss information coordination response.

Together CP and SPD organize resources into a cohesive structure and facilitate a collaborative community response to critical incidents.

This slide provides a breakdown of the SCSI agency hubs and their contract amounts for 2023. Each agency hub serves their respective geographic region of the city with flexibility to lend support across service areas when needed.

SCSI's approach and strategies are community-based, drawing on evidence-backed best practices from Seattle and other communities.

Agencies and services are embedded in community to meet individuals where they are and to minimize barriers to receiving services when they are needed.

SCSI offers community-centered gun violence reduction strategies that build relationships that address well-being, trauma, and safety.

The priority population for SCSI are youth and young adults of color and their families, individuals aged 12 to 30 years old primarily.

These individuals and families are from black and brown neighborhoods in Seattle where they live, go to school, or work.

There's a focus on youth and young adults who have had some contact with the criminal legal system, have experienced incidents of community violence, or have some contact with groups or gangs.

The contract program focus areas, and I'll go into more detail in the next following slides, are critical incident response and hotspot remediation, safe passages, resource navigation, and training and professional development.

So starting with critical incident response, These hotspot remediation are focused on the ground support, expertise, and resources aimed to prevent, intervene, and de-escalate violence.

This response accelerates recovery of those involved and aims to return people to everyday functioning.

In some instances, SPD notifies the Community Passageways Community Safety Team Director who then dispatches critical incident responders.

Individuals and community members may also reach out to SCSI hubs directly for support.

The Safe Passages activity includes a strategy that is based in schools by geographic regions to promote a zone of safety on and around school campuses.

Safe Passages works to decrease and de-escalate fight disturbances and incidences of violence on school campuses and connects young people and their families to supportive services and providers who can meet their needs.

The Zone of Safety is created by engaging with students, school administrators, teachers, community center staff, and neighboring business owners.

And social services include mentorship, housing navigation, employment, academic support, mental health, legal system advocacy, and navigation.

Resource navigation focuses on intervention and wraparound support services to stabilize and engage participants in ongoing services.

The first phase focuses on addressing immediate needs, including financial assistance, vigil and funeral support, housing and relocation, and referrals to agency hub services for long-term support.

The second phase of resource navigation focuses on ongoing support to the individual and family members.

And the agency hubs work together on making sure mentoring, grief counseling, navigation, victim assistance resources, medical resources, housing and job opportunities are available for families.

Lastly, SCSI emphasizes continuous collective learning and support for its staff and partners.

Training and professional development are essential components of this work.

Commute Passageways is the lead in bringing in external facilitators for training agency hubs in areas like community safety, de-escalation, outreach, crowd control, active shooter response, and retaliation prevention.

Urban Family is the lead for critical incident response training for agency hubs.

So HSD works with partners to track contract performance goals.

So we look at how much we do, how well we did it, and is anyone better off.

So the metrics here on this slide talk about how we track the number of at-risk individuals engaged or that complete agency hub case management or intake.

the number of case management participants who are enrolled or create a service goal or plan, the number of community engagement events implemented for hotspot remediation, number of critical incident responses dispatched by law enforcement and community sources, and the number of community safety trainings hosted for all three agency hubs.

We know we did well by tracking the number of case management participants who complete at least one goal in a number of areas, housing, education, financial, employment, pro-social, behavioral mental health and safety cohort compliance or reduced recidivism.

And then we are measuring how better off people are by looking at the number of case management participants who report a decreased involvement in violence and general crime or report feeling safer.

We also track the number and get information from our contracting agencies on the number of shots fired, incidents that are responded to by the SCSI partners, the number of at-risk individuals who engage or completed hub case management intake processes, the number of engagements clients receive before goals were completed, and the number of individuals who complete one goal in a variety of areas.

And so you can see the 21, 22, and 23 year-to-date totals.

So, that's my quick run through of SCSI and now is an opportunity for questions that will.

Thank you.

We'll have a second presentation, but I did want to pause here to see if there are questions associated with what we just heard from the Human Services Department on the Seattle Community Safety Initiative.

None from Councilmember Nelson here with me.

Any virtual questions?

Not seeing any.

I do have a couple of my own.

So two questions around the programs themselves.

On slide eight, there was a discussion of the program strategy and the protective factors that are identified as part of the program strategy.

I'm wondering if you could speak a little bit about how those protective protected factors were developed and established to be protective.

And then secondly, as it relates specifically to safe passages, I'm wondering, are those safe passages programs informally established at particular schools, or is there an actual formal agreement with the schools that they serve?

So I was having trouble hearing you.

So I kind of heard you a little bit.

Can you kind of repeat that for me so I can answer it properly?

I can, absolutely.

So first question relates to program strategy.

identification of the protective factors that are identified and established.

And I'm just wondering if you could speak a little bit to how that's done, how you identify these protected factors.

And then secondly, as it relates specifically to safe passageways, just interested to know whether or not that's an informal presence at those school campuses or whether or not there are specific agreements with the individual schools on your work there.

I'll address the protective factors.

So the protective factors reference STC's ongoing work co-designing an overarching theory of change for gun violence reduction and community well-being.

We also look at research from organizations like Cities United, Johns Hopkins University, Ready Chicago, and academic research from 2009 conducted on Seattle, Boston, New Orleans, Syracuse, Flint, and Youngstown.

There's a body of literature that talks about protective factors, especially for community-based interventions.

A point of clarification for STC, that's the Safe and Thriving Communities Division within the department, so we've been working to align our investments.

And the national data speaks volumes to being able to come up with protective factors also, like 75% of homicides in the city involve guns, right?

I mean, we know that already.

The gun violence has increased on a national platform.

And so when we start...

When we start looking at what protective factors are in my perspective, I look at it as like the boots on the ground work that we actually do and what we're seeing, the trends that we're seeing in gun violence, we are able to sit down and analyze it and come up with a safety plan with the data.

And so when you say protective factors, I know they're talking about different national studies, but here in our community, we have to look at our community and figure out what is a good safety plan for each area in our city and where the hubs that we are operating out of, what does it look like to be able to operate from a lens of protecting and putting safety plans in those areas for the boots on the ground work.

through the training and everything else that Annie Lee just talked about in the presentation.

The safe passage piece is something that we pulled from the safe passage team, Marty's team, Marty Jackson's team started doing safe passage a while ago.

And so as we came together and put this collaboration together, we all started training and working together to emulate that model.

And so each safety hub works around a number of schools.

in those areas, and we do have agreements with those schools.

We do have understandings with those schools.

Those schools have opened up.

Some of them have given us space to be able to operate and do some circles and actually do community feeds.

We feed the kids after school a few days a week.

So a lot of times, We are finding ourselves in spaces where we have had to step into schools that aren't in our safety hub area because there was a high level of violence or young people.

I mean, there was some kids getting robbed at gunpoint at middle schools for a minute at one point.

So once we heard about that, we pulled a collaboration together.

and decided we want to put a safe passage model in that space.

So we would be there at lunchtime.

We would be there after school.

We'd be escorting kids to their transportation, whether that's Metro or school buses or whatever it looked like.

So safe passage is just like a number of things.

And ARMS are growing out of it.

And we're supporting families out of it.

And some other things are growing from that service.

Thank you, I've been a great fan of the Safe Passages Program since I became aware of it as part of the Rainier Beach Beautiful Place to Live Project and tried before the pandemic to get it replicated in Denny and South.

And I'm very happy that despite my unsuccessful efforts replicating it in that way, it has in a different way been replicated at that school campus.

I know it's very welcome there.

Moving on to the contract performance goals and the program data.

I just want to lift up that our Council Central staff have put in a request that the Human Services Department provide the reports from which this data was drawn, so I'm just going to second that request here.

I really appreciate the way this slide is laid out to map performance metrics.

to the question that each is trying to answer.

And so, again, it would be helpful to have the data mapped out the same way.

I think another specific question about the performance goals, and the question in itself may be my showing my ignorance about the ability to track data or to know that something is true in a way that you can track it, but I'm wondering are we able to track subsequent involvement in gun violence of the individual participant level?

Or is there a reason why that's not possible or it's not the right question to ask?

Literally, when you ask me that question, it makes me a little uneasy because at the end of the day, we are very careful about how we document the criminal involvement because we don't want to put anybody in a situation where we're collecting data of individuals that might have some vulnerability, right?

Our goal is to help and aid, right?

Also be a safety measure.

So when we're collecting data, we do know who was involved in gun violence.

We do know who's a victim of it.

But when it comes down to the perpetrators, we try to go ahead and try to figure that.

It's a fine balance.

It's a gray line.

You know what I mean?

Community safety is really a balancing act at the end of the day because you have to keep your credibility.

in the community, in the trust in the community.

So however we maneuver that, but yes, we do collect the data.

We know how many victims there are because we help the victims, right?

So, you know, if there's a victim, there's got to be perpetrators, right?

And our goal is to get in front of stopping the perpetrators at this point.

And that brings me to another point is, The gun uptick in gun violence right now in our community has been really stressful on our end.

And we're putting ourselves in the middle of the violence on a daily basis and trying to go out there and do the outreach that we can and pull people into case management as we can.

But there's so many young people now being recruited by these gangs and jumping into the streets, it's mind-blowing.

It's almost like playing whack-a-mole, right?

You help a handful of people and then twice as many jump into the streets and are being recruited.

There's a large recruitment happening by older guys.

So it's been really hectic for us to do our work.

And we are effective at what we do.

It's just you don't get to see what we stop.

You don't get to see what we are able to make not happen.

You only see what happens on the news or whatever.

As tragic and upsetting as the the numbers are not numbers, they're people, are, I often say, I would hate to imagine the numbers and the people behind those numbers, how they would increase if you guys weren't out there doing the work that you're doing, all of you.

And then my last question, can we put up the program data slide one more time?

because there is, I think, yeah, thank you.

So it's just really startling to see that as of May, SCSI had already responded to as many incidents as you did in each of the last two complete years.

Again, I want to pause on this to amplify the work that you're doing and recognize that this obviously shows how you're working overtime on the response, just wondering for purposes of just getting a sense of what these numbers mean.

Is this a doubling of critical incidents?

Are you being pulled in more frequently?

A combination of both things?

And just trying to get a sense of your observations in the field on what that means.

I would say it was a combination of both things.

I literally am As our team is being stretched very thin due to the uptick, yeah, the combination is the trust that's been built with SPD to be able to respond in an effective manner.

And then at the same time, being connected deeply into the community, and the community now knows to call or, you know, hit us up when they see something happening, when there is a shooting or an incident.

So it's not just SPD calling us all the time for these incidents.

It's now community.

is calling us for incidents when they sometimes we're arriving right at the same time that law enforcement's arriving.

So we put a system in place that community trust and law enforcement trust.

And I think those two things, those two factors are coming to play with the uptick.

So we are answering more calls and it's really stressful at the end of the day because you're showing up.

at these spaces and seeing the carnage, the aftermath.

And our team has been, I just got to put it out there.

We have to do a lot of therapeutic healing services for these guys.

It's been really traumatic.

And a lot of times, since we're so connected to the community, these are relatives and people we're connected to and friends and, you know, sons and daughters of friends and nephews and cousins.

So it's been pretty taxing.

All right, Council Member Nelson.

Yeah, back to when we were talking about agreements with schools, is Garfield High one of the schools you have agreements with?

I'm just wondering if you could, if so, then what was the work that went on toward the end of the school year?

I know that there was a lot of, there were requests from faculty and parents that help was needed and there was also an expression that the help was not, they wanted community-driven help, not necessarily more officers on the scene.

So can you just talk about what you were doing around that?

around that situation?

Yeah, so that was, we don't have an official agreement with Garfield at this point.

We're gonna be working on that going into the new school year.

I wasn't at this meeting that was held and I got the messages back that they weren't, they didn't know that there was community support available or something to that effect.

But we were down at Washington Middle School up the street.

So every time there was an incident that happened, we were responding to those incidents that happened at that school that made them have a meeting in the first place.

We were on the end of trying to deal with the aftermath of some of those issues, the shootings that happened.

And we were also trying to deal on the front end of working with the young people in that community around that area on a regular basis.

We have ambassadors and case managers that have been working with and still does work with a number of the young people that do attend the school and that live around the area of that school.

So we're doing the work, but now we want to make something official with Garfield and we will be working with them.

We had four or five people start rotating through there towards the end of the school year, and started providing services.

We even had some tables set up.

Some volunteers came out and was doing some volunteer work.

you know, handing out food to young people.

So we started making our presence very well known since those incidents started escalating around the school.

So we will step into the new school year, trying to get some kind of official agreement with them.

But we're going to be boots on the ground outside on the perimeters anyway.

I'll also add that HSD has been working with DEEL and Parks on a sort of a more preventative strategy.

Our Youth and Family Empowerment Division has been working with Parks to set up more supports and services for students in that Garfield area.

Thanks.

I have a follow-up question, or it's not a follow-up to that one.

On page four of your presentation, it says, Under the background, in 2020, the city council added 4 million to HSD Seattle Community Safety Initiative.

Up from what?

What was it before?

Because that preceded my time here.

I'm sorry, I just want to make sure I understood the question you're asking about the ad and what it was for.

No, no, no.

What was it before 2020?

Because this slide says it added 4 million.

So what was the base funding?

Is this the one-time ad or the ongoing?

That's the one-time, the first.

So as I had mentioned, truly, the city has invested in different iterations of community safety efforts, especially with youth and young adults.

There's been some transitions.

We have those investments still to this day through different procurement processes.

during the pandemic and also, you know, I think the nation waking up to what's kind of existed for some time around institutionalized racism and their harms that being done, community passageways and our colleagues our leaders sitting behind table right now had a proposal.

And so this was the start of seed money, one-time funds for the Seattle Community Safety Initiative.

And then from there, after the one-time dollars added, we refined the contract working in part.

This is actually a really good demonstration of collaboration.

So there's kind of the city contracting way, and then there's the community, like, OK, so here's how we do it, and then melding it into a contract.

And so then it became ongoing dollars after that.

And so this is where it started with the idea, with the program model developed by community and council added the dollars here.

Thank you.

All right.

Thank you.

Let's move on to the second part of our presentation.

Okay, great.

Thank you.

Chair Herbold, members of the committee, thank you very much for having us back.

This is an update.

You were kind enough to include us in a couple of different briefings.

You mentioned early in your remarks that we came in and participated in some panels and then offered sort of an overview of the whole program.

Before I begin, I'd like to acknowledge and thank the incredible work of our colleagues and partners at HSD and in the Safe and Thriving Communities Division and the work that our collective partners are doing.

I'd also like to comment briefly, offering my both heartfelt respect and regard for being able to work with Coach Dom Davis every day in this collaborative strategy to increase safety across our region.

and also Chantelle Patu, Urban Family, Marvin Marshall, the YMCA, and the Alive and Free program.

And most importantly, I'd like to acknowledge Marty Jackson as well in the comments and echo what the sentiments that Chair Kim shared today.

I think I want to point out about what happened in Rainier Beach just briefly, that in real-time communication with Coach Dom that evening with I want to mention that Marty's team has been out in violent crime is down over 30% in Rainier Beach in large part because of those efforts every Friday night for that team to be out there and to be supporting community and providing care and well-being and an emphasis on love and connection.

And I had a chance to speak with the store manager of the Safeway just yesterday, and Larry was speaking also about how grateful he is for the investment the city is making, the pass-through money that helps to support our expansion and efforts in the Rainier Valley and also now up into Skyway.

So just, again, echoing the sentiments, gratitude, appreciation, and respect for the work of each of our community partners.

I'll be presenting at the request of Chair Herbold some updates on what's happening with the hospital-based intervention and some data, some qualitative data and a bit of quantitative data, and then sharing a bit about where we're going from here.

So thank you very much again for the time.

Just because I'm not going to do a presentation on the whole model, but just a refresher and speaking to some of the incredible elements that are built into SCSI.

And these are strategies that are both common and best practice or evidence-based across the nation.

So you'll often see folks in this field talking about these particular strategies because, of course, they are what works.

for the regional approach, including some of the strategies mentioned, starting with things like shots fired review, notifications from law enforcement partners, including SPD, and increasingly South King County and the Sheriff's Office.

Conflict mapping, which is something that perhaps if you have questions about, I'll invite Dom to speak to.

the knowledge and credible messenger approach.

And I think I just want to tag in that question about the protective factors, that credible messengers are a protective factor in connection to a caring positive adult is a critical element of helping young people resist violence and move towards more positive pro-social attachment and opportunity.

Critical incident response, as we've heard, violence interruption, which is embedded in that, the hospital-based intervention that we'll speak to, Hotspot remediation, the activities, much like what Marty's team is doing in Rainier Beach and our collaborative partners are doing across the region.

Outreach and strategic community engagement.

Referral happens as a result of everything to the right-hand side of this graphic, which are the referral pathways where young people, families in need are identified and brought into care and services.

You'll hear a little bit about, at the end of my presentation, strategy that we're now embedding.

As we are a pilot, we are recognizing that there are many critical elements in play, and still some gaps that are missing.

And the most important being relentless engagement and cognitive behavioral intervention, both evidence-based and best practiced, and evidence-informed strategies that Dom and I deepened our learning about in trips to Chicago and to Newark, New Jersey, and other places around the nation.

I'll speak to how we'll be resourcing that.

We're really excited about it.

And again, this moves into healing-centered care coordination, much like you heard.

We have a lot of work to do in the case management strategies and service navigation strategies that SCSI is doing great work.

Family support services and much attached to the hospital and investments both the city and county are making to allow the teams to be nimble in meeting the needs of may need emergency relocation, may need disability accommodations as a result of being victims of gun violence, et cetera.

Community restoration, healing events, and that brings us back to the clock where we end continually reviewing our data, analyzing the data, and conducting evaluation readiness work with epidemiologists and public health who are working to build capacity directly with our community teams to measure the impact of their work.

The hospital-based intervention, so I'd love to share this.

The remarkable Paul Carter is not here in person, but certainly in spirit in this slide.

And you had a chance, Chair Herbold, also to hear from Paul directly at the Board of Health briefing not so long ago.

What happens with the hospital-based intervention is bedside care and connection to services provided by the hospital, and most importantly, serves as a pathway to referral into community care.

The blended funding that the county initiated this project and with generous support from HSD and from this committee and from the mayor's office have continued to invest in and help scale up the hospital-based intervention, so now we are We are co-investing in that at a 50-50 split right now.

And with one-time investment to increase the hospital through a gap that was identified, the hospital-based intervention to serve an older population with the council action that was able to do that one-time funding.

They're growing their team and seeing already remarkable results.

And importantly, Community Passageways is the lead organization receiving referral for those ages 12 to 24 years old.

The gap that was identified for the needs of older adults is being supported in a new contract with HSD, with the Urban League, who are mirroring some of the strategies and approaches that you heard about today and that are a part of the regional approach as well.

the investment outlined here, and the referral I mentioned, both from this younger population and slightly older population and beyond to the Urban League.

And we will probably see an increase and over time an expansion of the services to meet the needs of the older adult population.

And lastly, we're really proud of our partnership with the State of Washington's Department of Commerce, the Office of Firearm Injury and Community Violence Prevention.

We work very closely with them.

They watched very closely the work that was happening at the hospital and are now also co-investing to increase the support at the hospital, specifically a director position and adding service navigators.

And I recently had an opportunity to go with Dom and his team to meet with the folks at Harborview, and to see the expansion, and the collaboration, and coordination, and the mutual respect that's happening.

And it's quite remarkable.

It is also an evidence-based and best practice-based strategy supported by the Health Alliance for Violence Interventions, the HAVI, who are providing technical assistance to us on this project as well.

Some outcomes to share, you know, I'm going to, we'll happily provide any data the council asks for, but, you know, because the epidemiologists have been working with our community partners very closely with capacity building efforts, specifically with community passageways, increasingly with our other partners.

We are seeing a positive move toward being able to measure individual behavior change over time, but currently this is still in the evaluation readiness as a part of the pilot.

And since our launch, specifically to the hospital, 92 young people between the ages I mentioned, 12 and 24, were admitted as victims of gun violence and were referred to Community Passageways for ongoing care and support, a very promising sort of out-of-the-gate measure that 100% of those young people that they engaged at the hospital, they were able to refer to Community Passageways.

Community Passageways and our partners in the regional peacekeepers Collective to date have enrolled 375 young people, served over 213 families, responded to over 135 critical incidents, hosted over 264 community events, 136 hotspot engagements, which are distinct, not just pop-up events, but strategically looking to cool down tensions and deflect potential retaliations or mitigate potential retaliation.

and 93 community healing events.

I want to point out about critical incident response that the teams are responding to 100% of notifications.

But not all notifications, as Don would tell you, are deployable.

So they may receive a notification, but that does not mean that there is an active scene that they can go and service.

And so they're doing very sophisticated work to determine what they can deploy to and what is the best strategy to actually follow up and mitigate the tensions.

and ideally lead toward mediation.

And here, I'd like to point out, Chair Herbold, is a lovely photograph of yourself.

Thank you so much for participating in our Gun Lockbox giveaway and supporting Community Passageways' grand opening of their, or ribbon-cutting, soon-to-be grand opening, of their service safety hub in the Central District at 23rd and Jackson.

Wanted to just share a little bit of the quantitative, some of what our evaluation team has been sharing with Community Passageways, that they are seeing strength and supportive relationships as reported by our young people.

And again, back to the notion of protective factors, how critical that positive relationship is, that young people feel a sense of strength and efficacy in coping, creating values of self, seeking future interests, further interests, a future vision for themselves, continually addressing trauma, learning or implementing new coping skills, and they are feeling safer.

So I think those are important report outs from our young people and from the folks being serviced by Community Passageways and our partners.

Strengthen families.

The mothers that were asked or the reported into us are expressing that they are more at ease, that their young people are being wrapped around with care and support from community partners.

Families feel reunited or able to reunite, and that has been significant.

And then strengthening material needs, providing food, housing support, funeral support, academic success, and improved attendance, extracurricular activities.

Again, positive signs of attachment to pro-social things.

to the protective factors that you mentioned earlier.

Part of the co-investment is allowing for expansion.

As we know, gentrification has significantly and substantively impacted the communities that are also most impacted by gun violence.

And displacement from Seattle neighborhoods to communities in South King County has necessitated this regional approach to gun violence.

And our co-investing allows for us to really be a web of support that reaches from the central area of Seattle through West Seattle, through the communities around Rainier Beach and upper Rainier Beach and Skyway, and now increasingly into other municipalities in South King County.

Currently, with the blended funding, we are expanding to Skyway to add a safety hub.

And in Skyway, that will be managed and supported by our partners, Urban Family, and it'll be a part of the evolution of our work with Rainier Beach Action Coalition and additional partners that have been expanding services around Rainier Beach.

The regional gun violence program I mentioned is focusing on scaling up.

And we're implementing geographically focused service hubs in Kent, which will be led by community passageways.

There is a direct correlation between communities displaced from the central area now residing in Kent.

So the efficacy and power building that the community passageways has done in the central area has a great effect and will have great impact in the city of Kent.

Burien will be supported by the YMCA or the Alive and Free program.

Sky Wittaquilla I mentioned, the Urban Family.

And we're very excited that the great work that's happening in the hub models is extending and the appetite is strong.

We meet monthly with mayors and police chiefs in those communities in South King County and they're very encouraged.

by the opportunity to bring those services home and to, you know, down the road we'll hope to see further investments in ensuring that that can last for the long term.

And then regional gun violence has selected an intermediary.

I think we've shared that out certainly at the Board of Health.

It is a best practice identified by the Giffords Foundation folks that an intermediary to provide fiscal oversight, capacity building support, evaluation data reporting really allows for the community organizations, as Dom mentioned, really focus on the boots on the ground efforts and do their work unencumbered by some of the weight of the data and the reporting and the fiscal barriers that sometimes happen when they have small capacity and really need to be on the front lines doing the work.

So we will be announcing shortly who our intermediary partner is because we're in negotiations.

We'll wait until those things are final and be happy to report that back.

A little bit of additional progress I'd like to mention.

Taking a regional approach, and this is sort of as we have talked in our evaluation team about measuring the impact of collaboration and coordination.

These are some points I can make specific to the findings in that area.

Taking a regional approach has helped us to increase coordination across systems, allowed for better collaboration between government and community, and though that relationship has I think it is important to note that there is a strong sense of community.

There is very positive signs of the collaboration and will to work together.

attended, but loosely attended, but in light of what happened on that Friday evening, over 100 people maxed out the capacity of that Zoom meeting to attend and weigh in.

Chief Diaz, of course, complimented the work of the community partners and stressed that law enforcement cannot do this alone, and that the community partners are critical to the overall safety framework of any good public safety approach.

So I just want to highlight that and call that out as more testament to the improving and strengthening of the collaboration between government systems and community providers.

The blended investments are allowing for services to be available to young people and families regardless of zip code.

We're proud of that.

And as you mentioned, Chair Herbold, in your opening, This was the only regional approach selected by the White House in part because of our will to collaborate and most importantly to recognize the impacts of the public health crisis of racism and the destabilization of community and the impacts of gentrification and how critical it is for us to make sure that services follow people where they live, work, and learn.

Safe gun storage efforts in coordination with community partners have resulted in a distribution of over 600 gun lock boxes since the summer of 2022 when we started our process of acknowledging National Gun Violence Awareness Day with this activity.

And this year, in addition to the three neighborhoods in Seattle where we had historically done these gun lock box giveaways, we now are including the city of Kent, we're including So we will continue to make the opportunities available for folks to come out.

Most recently in Tukwila, it was the most well-attended event.

And the need for gun lockboxes and the fact that folks felt bold enough to come and request that safety equipment ran us out.

And now there's a waiting list for the next 100 lockboxes.

So just a very positive sign that harm reduction and especially harm reduction led by a community who provides the education and distributes the resources.

An urban family does a remarkable job putting on really engaging and beautiful events to make sure that folks feel welcome and participate.

Collaboration with community partners, public health, the city of Seattle, the city of Tacoma, the state of Washington, the Alliance for Gun Responsibility, and most importantly, our community partners, we were able to successfully pull off our first annual Together we end Gun Violence Conference in Tacoma.

We're really grateful for Director Kim's participation as well as one of our moderators on the very important panel about investing in the work and funding the work long term.

And that appetite has grown for that so much so that I feel safe to share here because nothing is written in stone, but the Seahawks have invited us to host our next conference at the stadium next year.

the increased desire and appetite to have space where more people can participate beyond the 300. And then I'm excited to announce that we secured some funding, over $500,000 in funding from Everytown for Gun Safety to support technical assistance for a couple of different things.

We have had a great relationship with Cities United, and as you know, conducted our community safety and well-being planning process under their technical assistance a couple of years back.

We have also been working through the White House model with technical assistance from the National Institute for Criminal Justice Reform, the HAVI, and other partners.

We're adding in specific technical assistance for that cognitive behavioral intervention curriculum I mentioned earlier.

This is where we are evolving.

Our pilot in Roca, Baltimore is really doing best in class work to provide a cognitive behavioral intervention that will be conducted by the violence interrupters and street outreach workers in immediate and proximate ways to young people to help.

deal with the mindset change that needs to happen for long-term success and to move away from involvement in violence and also to strengthen their ability to resist the recruitment that Dom was talking about earlier.

So through those trusted relationships, this cognitive behavioral intervention will enhance some of the great work already happening in some of the programs in our organizations, including deep dive with community passageways.

And lastly, with the National Institute for Criminal Justice Reform, they will be supporting technical assistance to conduct a cost of violence analysis, a problem analysis, and just continue to help give us the information we need to make sure that we are both investing and thinking long term, especially As the federal government is facing funding cliffs, the Biden administration identified $5.6 billion to be available to this work.

But again, depending on what happens with next administrations, those guarantees certainly aren't in place.

So there will be an increased need to recognize and support community violence intervention work.

The service is happening with SCSI, with RPKC, and future initiatives that are led by a community.

So, we are looking to make sure that we have all the right information to guide that next step for long-term sustainability.

And, you know, I just want to mention, too, that, you know, Dom spoke to the emotional health and well-being of the frontline workers, and the vicarious trauma is real, and in many cases, it's not vicarious.

It's very direct trauma.

As Dom mentioned, so often the victims of gun violence, or even perpetrators of gun violence, and frankly could be either at any time in a conflict, are known to, or related to, or deeply close in one way or another.

to the practitioners who are providing this service.

And certainly, as is evidenced by what happened last week and what Dom mentioned about this stress and duress this team is experiencing, we're very interested in continuing to find ways to support healing and well-being and emotional health in the long term for the folks on the front line who face this issue down every single day, and in many cases, putting their lives on the line.

So I also want to, again, thank Dom and Chantel and Marty and Marvin and the Freedom Project and the Progress Pushers and folks involved in the Rainier Beach Action Coalition who are at these front lines and working together every day to address our communities, the violence in our communities.

Some lessons learned.

This comes, again, from the work the epidemiologists are doing and what we are gathering.

So I'll just sort of sum things up here.

As I mentioned, intermediaries are a best practice and I think that is something that with the rapid funding that came out because of the severe uptick in gun violence in many reports related to the stress caused by COVID-19 and We've seen correlations of economic distress and out of school time and desocialization and a lot of things that increase community pressures.

So making sure that our community practitioners can do the work and that are supported to build their backbone through things like temporary or even long-term as in Chicago, intermediaries who support that work in the back office.

Community violence intervention must be included as a pillar and a cornerstone of any good public safety framework.

And again, I mentioned Chief Diaz's comments.

It's widely understood that community and law enforcement and government, none of us can do it alone.

And it's critical that we be working together and that the first responders and community violence intervention work be recognized as such.

Like firefighters, like medics, they have a high set of skills and they have to use their own lived experience every day to face the work.

So I want to highlight that.

Community-based organizations need long-term commitment to capacity building and implementation support.

It takes, you know, implementation science tells us it takes a minimum of three years to get good at something and move it toward fidelity.

And when we are building, it takes time to institute and implement things that will sustain long-term.

So just want to continue to highlight the investment and support for building capacity and continuing implementation.

And one note that many of our partners have been doing this work, and certainly everybody we mentioned in this room here today have been doing this work for decades.

But because of these initiatives, we're asking them to rapidly bring things to scale and to successfully coordinate across organizations and to collaborate with government and systems.

That's a lot of work for community partners who are already doing the work.

highlighting that and that we have a collective commitment to supporting that is important to us.

Comprehensive community violence intervention must include cognitive behavioral intervention.

I mentioned that.

We can chase ambulances, I hate to say it that way, but we can continually respond to crisis.

But ultimately, if we can't provide young people with alternatives and a learning place where they can make a mental shift and attach to the positive pro-social opportunities, we will continue to be in crisis mode.

And coordination, alignment of funding, evaluation, training, shared technical assistance must be sustained to see meaningful impact.

And I know the question really ultimately is, has gun violence gone down?

And while we're still seeing an uptick in gun violence in some ways, in some places, we're also seeing extremely positive results for the emphasis and targeted approaches that are happening.

Just a couple of comments.

Again, this goes back to the qualitative data.

But just hearing directly from the partners that a huge success has been connecting with helping youth get to a point where they want to change and do something different.

This is a quote.

We have to acknowledge with empathy that they won't get it on the first try.

And it's been encouraging to see youth try over and over to be successful and change their mindset.

And I personally am encouraged to hear that the workforce feels that way because we all want our young people to thrive.

And when they don't thrive at the first try, the power of this work is that folks don't give up on them and stay the course and stay alongside of them.

And then building face-to-face rapport with our team and the hospital medical center interventionists, Harborview Medical Center interventionists at bedside is exceptionally important to participant buy-in.

So just hearing from folks who are feeling the impact of somebody who is their shared lived experience standing at their bedside, and helping them navigate towards recovery has been very powerful.

And lastly, the slide forward, I'm sorry, the last slide and the path forward, just continuing to hope that we expand and fully resource and coordinate our service safety hubs.

Again, people move around and we want to make sure that we Institute these locations, places, and spaces where people can access services regardless of where they live.

Again, I mentioned the technical assistance that's coming both from ROCA and from NICJR in the near term, funded by Everytown for Gun Safety.

We are now moving forward with instituting an academy of community-led safety to certify and credential CVI workforce.

That is in partnership with folks at the University of Chicago and our good friend, Dr. Chico Tillman, formerly of the Ready National Center for Safe Communities.

Every town is supporting that effort as well, and we'll report out on some of the next steps as we continue to iterate.

And then securing long-term funding to increase the workforce.

The Regional Peacekeepers Collective is funding about 50 staff positions to try to blanket areas and support the work in both Seattle and then areas of South King County.

And parallel efforts in just individual cities on the East Coast have as many as 150 staff.

ensuring resources for emotional health and trauma support for the frontline staff I mentioned, providing ongoing training and professional development again I mentioned, and then increasing community buy-in with public awareness campaigns.

And the very last comment I'll make is that on the city buses, on Metro buses right now, launched just a few days ago, is our Together We End Gun Violence campaign, which is on the Metro buses, and it provides a link to a resource page that details the work of both the initiatives that we shared today, and additional resources available in the community for families and individuals impacted by gun violence.

Thank you.

Normally, I'd want to allow for time for questions.

We do have another item on our agenda that we do need to get through.

So, I think what I would recommend and request from committee members is that we collect questions that we might have for follow-up.

and reach out to HSD and King County Public Health.

With that follow-up, I am going to take the prerogative of being the chair, though, just to put one thing out.

I was really eager to hear for an update on the expansion, the council-funded expansion of the hospital-based gun violence prevention program.

I appreciate this morning I did receive the program description from the contract with the Urban League and notification that the public health contract is going through final routing and that HSD will share it with me once it's final.

I have been trying to bird dog this funding that was provided in last year's budget, and it is now August, and again, we don't have a completed contract yet, so I'm just really, I understand it takes time to negotiate the contracts.

I'm hoping that given that those negotiations are still ongoing, I'm really hoping that you can tell me that we have begun to serve the older cohort.

Okay, great.

I'll just clarify that the Urban League contract has been signed and in place, and they're providing the social service aspect.

Harborview did go ahead and staff up the position to serve the older adult population, even though the public health aspect of that contract is getting finalized as we speak.

Oh, actually, it was signed today.

So that piece is signed, but just know that the Harborview staffing

Yeah, I knew from probably around June that that piece had happened, and yay for that.

The final contract is over with public health, so we're just putting signatures and routing it.

But we signed it, and I believe that they're signing it as well.

Excellent.

And so the hospital staff, they've been hired.

They've been doing the work for a while now.

It's the social services component that Urban League provides.

Will we see, now that the contract's changed, is the felt experience of the client going to be is that they're going to now be able to access services that they weren't able to before?

Is that more or less it in a nutshell?

Yes, and we're happy to report back.

All right, fantastic.

Thank you so much.

Appreciate again.

I'm just out of.

Thank you.

Oh, I'm sorry.

I know you said no questions.

I just wanted to say thank you as well.

Just want to say thank you so much to the panel and between the two panels, folks are highlighting some of the funding that was invested in 2020. I can't miss this opportunity to highlight that that is a good example of where we use unspent money within the Seattle Police Department that has been sort of mischaracterized and misframed as somehow harming SPD.

It was funding that was sitting on a shelf, unable to be used for the hiring plan and unable to be used for the retention strategy.

And we move that funding into upstream solutions like the $4 million for violence reduction.

another four for mental health services and more that the council, the chair Herbold had led on as well.

So I just wanted to lift it up and say thank you for featuring that and for telling us how you've already seen a return on those investments and how it's saving lives and making an impact.

Very powerful testimony today from both panels.

So thank you.

for saying.

Can I make a closing statement?

Of course.

I wanted to make sure, well thank you, the funding, the city, the county coming together for funding, the hospital approach is a beautiful thing.

The referrals that come through our PKC out of the hospital, that's been the crust of us being able to really support the families with all the aftermath.

of the harm that's done with the, right?

And at the same time, the SCSI referral process, where we're coming through the critical instance response in the city, coming through SPD, coming through our hubs and our interactions and our boots on the ground work, like the two referral processes is what's been making this successful, right?

The hospital on one end, through RPKC, and then the actual work in the city, right, that's also spilling out around the region, and now we're building these hubs, so we're able to take the hub model that we've been able to create through SCSI and put that around the region in Kent and Skyway and other places.

So I want to say thank you for being able to fund this, support this, and put us in the position to be able to not just affect our city through SCSI, but also affect the whole county.

This is going to be beautiful once we get everything set up.

I just want to thank all the council members.

I want to thank you guys for funding this and pushing this and propelling this forward.

So I just want to throw that out there.

Appreciate that, Coach.

I don't think I have anything to follow.

Normally, I would end up with some closing remarks, but I think that does it.

We are making sure that community violence intervention is included as a pillar of our public safety framework, as recommended.

Thank you.

Mr. Clerk, can you please read the final item on our agenda?

The agenda item for law enforcement, assisted diversion lead, co-lead, quarter one, and two metrics reporting.

Thank you, Mr. Clerk.

This is a follow-up presentation from many of the same folks that we heard from on May 9th in the Public Safety and Human Services Committee, where we heard about the new Human Services Department contract with PDA for both lead and co-lead, and particularly the new performance metrics that were included.

really glad to have everybody back today to report on the first two quarters of performance metrics that were collected under the new contract.

As a general remark, I know the slides that we're reviewing today were created by the Human Services Department, and I hope that our participants from PDA will feel free to respond to questions from committee members or other thoughts as we work through the presentation.

Anne, I believe you're kicking us off with a quick overview.

Good morning, Anne Gorman, Council Central staff.

Just a bit of background for today's presentation.

Early this year, the Human Services Department and Purpose Dignity Action, PDA, worked together to develop additional performance metrics for the city's contract with PDA to better understand the use of city dollars and to tell the story of the LEAD and COLEAD programs.

The 2023 contract is the first one that breaks out PDA's budgets for lead and co-lead consistent with the direction council provided in council budget action HSD38C1 last fall.

So also an appropriate time to reexamine program reporting.

HSD was last in this committee on May 9th and provided an overview of the enhanced performance metrics as well as some summary budget information.

And today's presentation will walk through the first two quarters of program data under the new reporting rubric.

People should understand that the new rubric may in some cases make it difficult to compare 2023 results directly to those from prior years, but stakeholders all felt that it was important to provide a fuller picture moving into the future.

And I just want to acknowledge once again the diligent and collaborative work of HSD and PDA in developing the new metrics this year and the transparency HSD brought to their conversations with central staff around this work.

I think that people will see that the new metrics really will bring increased clarity to our understanding of the impact of PDA programs and also of the environment in which they operate.

All right, so good morning, Committee Chair Herbold, members of the Public Safety and Human Services Committee.

For the record, my name is Michael Bailey, and I have the pleasure and privilege of serving as one of the Deputy Directors here at the Seattle Human Services Department.

I'm joined here by one of our dedicated and talented policy advisors, Chris Clayson.

I'm also joined by the executive leadership of PDA, Lisa Dugard, and Tara Moss.

Chris and I are thankful for the invitation to join you today.

As you'll hear from our team in just a few slides, the mission of the Seattle Human Services Department is to connect people with resources and solutions during times of need.

When we do this well, we create a city where all residents can live, learn, work, and take part in a strong and healthy community.

During today's committee presentation, the panel before you will share one of our contracted programs, the lead and co-lead program, and show how it seeks to provide some of those critical resources and solutions.

As our relationship with PDA continues to grow, our ability to improve metrics, outcomes, and data sharing will also grow.

And you heard a little bit from Amy about our path forward.

You'll see some of that growth reflected today.

You'll also hear our thoughts on how we can continue to collaborate to continue that growth.

And before handing it over to Chris, I'd like to thank Chair Herbold for her continued interest on this matter.

We appreciate your leadership.

and your desire to see the city residents connected to services.

I'd also like to thank the leadership of PDA for being open, for receiving our feedback, and for being open to collaborate as we strive to make a meaningful difference in the city of Seattle.

I will now hand it over to Chris.

Good morning, everybody.

I just briefly want to provide an agenda for the presentation today.

Really briefly going to get into introduction and then some background and context about the lead and co-lead programs.

Then we're going to roll right into a look specifically at the lead performance metrics over the first two quarters of the year before transitioning to co-lead and then happy to take questions as well.

Very briefly on this slide, Deputy Director Michael Bailey and Interim Deputy Director Annie Lee both spoke to this, but I just want to make a note here that the LEAD and CoLEAD programs both sit under the Supporting Safe Communities Impact Area of HSD.

Some context about the programs as I discussed there.

Regarding today's presentation, again, we're going to be focusing on LEAD and CoLEAD.

The former is also known as Let Everyone Advance with Dignity.

It is a post-arrest pre-booking program allowing law enforcement and community members to refer individuals engaged in low-level offenses to community-based services rather than jail and prosecution.

PDA subcontracts with Evergreen Treatment Services REACH program for LEAD outreach and case management services, while PDA itself provides overall project management and legal services for clients.

CoLEAD is a related program that launched in 2020, and it provides temporary lodging and case management to unsheltered LEAD-eligible individuals.

PDA itself provides the CoLEAD outreach and case management services to clients, and subcontracts with Rebel X for property management services, and we deliver care for alternative safety response at co-lead facilities.

And then one final background note as well, LEAD is governed under an interjurisdictional memorandum of understanding by a policy coordinating group to which PDA's project management team reports.

That coordinating group, the governing board there sets policy and approves operational protocols for LEAD.

One more piece of context here.

As mentioned, the 2023 contract does provide separate and distinct budgets for LEED and CoLEED.

This gives an overview of that funding.

LEED has a total of $14.6 million across funders and $9.9 million specifically from the City of Seattle.

In 2023, CoLEED's total allocation is $14.5 million roughly, with $6.7 of that coming via the City of Seattle.

This also includes a portion of funding held by HSD to support the leasing of a co-lead hotel.

As mentioned, earlier this year, HSD and PDA had the opportunity to come to the committee and share information about that 2023 contract.

One of the major takeaways, again, was the collaboration to really define the programs and the performance metrics within.

It's really been a rewarding, I think, six months as well, and the word collaboration has been used a lot, and that's absolutely true.

I think you'll see in the ensuing slides a wealth of information.

It's allowed for great discussion to date and even more discussion about what we can do in the remainder of 2023 to further discuss lead and co-lead.

Just one point I wanted to make before you moved on.

I really appreciate the agreement from HSD, I think probably a year ago now, to make sure that this work and the contracts are housed in the Supporting Safe Communities Division of the Human Services Department.

Previously, it was in addressing homelessness.

And as we know, that's not the right fit for this program.

I think it's, again, within the conversation that we just had about how community safety is part of our public safety continuum, it's really important and useful that this work be housed in the Supporting Safe Communities Division of the department.

Thank you.

So as promised, we're going to first focus in on LEAD's performance metrics.

And this first slide centers in on referrals into the LEAD program.

Again, a bit of a callback to the previous presentation, but law enforcement referrals are prioritized for LEAD.

However, there are several pathways individuals find themselves to the program.

Briefly, these include arrest diversion referrals, and these occur when law enforcement refers an individual to LEAD rather than arresting them for a crime.

Social contact referrals are also initiated by law enforcement, and these occur when SPD refers individuals they believe are engaging in law violations but for whom no probable cause to arrest exists.

There are also true blood referrals, which serve individuals with acute mental health needs.

and other disabilities.

And then, finally, community referrals, which are identified via neighborhood stakeholders, businesses, and other community-based organizations.

This year, I just briefly want to call out that there was the inclusion of nine focus impact areas that were introduced from which the majority of community referrals are made.

In turning to the data, through quarter two, there have been a total of 226 lead referrals.

with 108 in Q1 and 118 in Q2.

The chart on the left provides the breakdown of those referrals over quarter and by type.

The majority are community initiated, which make up roughly 64% of all referrals, followed by social contact at 25%, true blood at 9%, and arrest aversion at 3%.

Regarding the time it takes to intake a client from referral, overall average across the two quarters is 85 days.

And a couple takeaways from this referral information, we're encouraged to see the steady flow of referrals from Q1 to Q2, especially that increase.

The share of community referrals as well, I think, speaks to the focused impact area approach, and we hope to dive even more into that data.

in the months ahead.

One area to look at is reducing that average days to intake just to make sure individuals are receiving services as quickly as possible and being brought into LEAD.

And similarly, on this slide, the number of community-initiated referrals really encouraged to see that number.

This council was also active as an advocate to broaden the referral pipeline so it's not dependent on a law enforcement referral.

We want to see both.

And this is, I think, really good evidence of our emphasis and our advocacy for that change.

So, thank you.

Thank you, and may I just add that our goal for this year was 150 referrals, I believe, and as you can see with these numbers, we're exceeding that already.

Just on this slide, a couple of other notes.

We are, though, acknowledging the importance of different front doors to this approach to services, including community referrals.

The arrest referral number, generally in the history of LEAD, it drives a shorter span of time from referral to intake.

We are anticipating arrest referrals, meaning post-arrest pre-booking referrals to accelerate pursuant to the anticipated ordinance addressing possession and public use.

Meeting later today with SPD to work on a framework for directives and for prioritization of those referrals by officers.

But I think it's inevitable that that number is going to rise and that will almost automatically drive the time to referral down.

The other note on timed referral is that individuals in the true blood class with serious mental illness typically have a longer arc to completed intake because intake involves an executed release of information, which for people with serious mental illness requires trust and also just sort of being able to engage with case managers at a time and place when it's clear what is being agreed to and why.

And that rarely can be accomplished in 30 days for that population, which is a population that this framework is really well designed for since people who are not legally competent can best be addressed outside of the court system often.

So we don't want to exclude that population from this work, even though their ARC-II completed intake can be longer.

Turning from referrals, now we're going to look on this slide at LEAD's total caseload across both quarters.

This serves as a snapshot in time for these quarters.

The program served a total of 759 and 752 unique clients in quarter one and two respectively.

Again, that table to the left provides the point in time breakdown.

of this count by client status.

Across both quarters, just over 10% of clients were considered to be in outreach.

These are clients that LEAD is working to initially engage from a referral and bring into services, but also critically, those they are trying to re-engage with after contact is lost, for instance.

And this group is categorized, as you can see on the slide, as having less than one substantive meeting with a case manager in the last 90 days.

Over 80% of clients are considered active, meaning that they do have one or more substantive meeting with a case manager in that time period to access resources, work on behavior shifts, and also achieving identified goals that we'll talk about momentarily.

And then the final group are alumni who comprise roughly 5%.

of the program total, and these are clients that have reached ability and no longer require intensive supports, though they do remain within the lead universe should they need to reengage.

And regarding takeaways, it's really good to see the vast majority of clients are actively engaged in working with case managers from a referral.

We always want to increase the share of clients who are getting to that alumni stage and then critically exiting the program because of stability goals being met.

And I think to that end, and again on collaboration, HSD wants to work with PDA over the next few months to really look at the discharge reasons and how many of those are positive for people who have fully exited the program upon reaching stability.

And can you speak to, and maybe leads prepared to do so, the factors that help you determine which status a particular client is in?

And I do recognize, Liz Dugard, you raised your hand.

I recognize you as well, whether or not to answer that question or to offer another observation.

Sure, I think looking at this table, it's important to know that these are not the same people.

So the 40 who are alumni in Q2 aren't the same, aren't necessarily subsumed within the 44 in Q1.

There is movement through these categories, and not reflected what Chris is indicating is, I think, for future.

It'll be important to add another line to show discharged.

So alumni is not discharged.

Alumni are considered still participants in the program, but they don't need intensive support.

They're essentially in a maintenance stabilization status.

But in Q1, there were 45 people who were also discharged.

Now, there are two different reasons you could be discharged, and Chris is calling out that it will be important to separate these.

in future reporting.

One reason is because people are stable in the community and don't need to be enrolled and taking up a slot on a case manager's caseload.

So successfully sort of graduated, if you will.

And then the other is because despite outreach, you know, LEAD doesn't just not find people, right?

The outreach teams are looking for people, using data and partnerships to find people who were referred to them for a reason, because they were expected.

to be engaged in problematic activity if there's not an intervention.

So we're not just indifferent, do we find them or not?

But at a certain point, if we have not been able to find somebody, or if someone is, it's honestly, it's just not working, right?

They're not engaging and it's a choice.

Those people are also discharged because it's not effective.

So both of those are outside the framework here, but probably important in showing the, the way that the program parses folks that were referred.

So outreach status can either be that very beginning chapter before people are regularly engaged, or it could be somebody who has dropped into a less frequent engagement.

So less than one substantive meeting in the last 90 days.

Active folks have had more than one substantive meeting in the last 90 days, and then alumni, like we said, in touch because that's helpful and they might need a light touch support but are not anticipated to need regular meetings.

And if I may, I will say that PDA has been incredibly helpful with going through the data.

We recognize that we're still seeking to improve.

This is part of that improvement.

So as you seek clarity, we'll be sure to include that into future graphics.

And in the event that we are invited back, you should have that clarity.

So the indicators, we hear you loud and clear.

We'll be sure to include that in the next presentation.

I think it's a good idea for us to say that HSD has been extraordinarily collaborative.

That has not been a unidirectional partnership.

We really, really appreciate this active check-in approach to are we capturing, you know, are we telling the story, are we capturing the information that stakeholders and public funders need and are entitled to and look forward to continuing to fine tune.

So glad to hear that.

And going off of that as well, I think to the next slide, looking at one of the new metrics put into the 2023 contract, centering on goal achievement.

As mentioned, clients really wants to become engaged in LEAD, work with case managers on individualized plans towards stabilization and outline service connections and resources to help them accomplish that.

The goals that clients come up with with their case managers cover a range of topics such as accessing basic needs, food, clothing, transportation, identification, housing, shelter, and also critically overcoming legal barriers.

The chart to the left shows the share of lead clients that have achieved one or more goals in a quarter.

As you can see, in quarter one, 434 clients or 57% of all lead participants achieved a goal.

And this number rose to 479 clients in Q2, bumping that share up to 64%.

As this is a new metric, we are really still analyzing this to understand what it means for program success and putting down a benchmark going forward.

But we are heartened to see that 10% increase in goal achievement quarter over quarter.

One note that we found is that the goals themselves are fairly broad, so we'd like to work with PDA to capture a bit more specificity in terms of what achievement means with LEAD.

And just to note as well that PDA's narrative reports frequently provide that additional context that really ground what achievement is in concrete terms.

Just a couple of examples of that, you know, I've read numerous anecdotes about individuals who have been able to finally lease their own apartment with the help of LEAD case managers.

case managers attending medical appointments to ensure individuals get the necessary care, assistance collecting required documentation to apply for benefits, working to resolve outstanding charges and more.

So I think tapping into that level of detail and figuring out a way to get that into reporting would help further distill achievement in solid terminology and provide that clarity around lead progress and achievement that everyone wants to realize.

In terms of how individuals are supported in the program, this slide is going to key in on referrals based on client need.

And I do want to provide a couple of caveats before getting into the data.

First, this is a joint metric that's reported on behalf of both lead and co-lead clients.

And then second, earlier in the presentation I spoke about referrals into the lead program.

These are a different type of referral.

These are connections made to outside services for lead and co-lead clients by their case managers.

So in quarter one, there were 730 such referrals, and that number rose to 792 by 62 in Q2.

Overall, that's a total of 1,522 total duplicated referrals through the first six months of the year.

And these are tracked by four categories, which you can see the breakdown again on the chart on the left.

Not surprisingly, the leading type of referral are legal services at 35% of all referrals, followed by substance use treatment programs at 31%.

behavioral health programs at 19% and finally connections to stable lawful income sources at 15%.

The slide really I think demonstrates that LEAD and CoLEAD are making robust connections to the broader services community for their clients.

A question again coming from this is that we're interested in exploring how successful referrals are in connecting clients to supports and enrollment on that and we look forward to exploring that with PDA more as well.

We've already had a couple discussions on that effect too.

So with that, I wanted to turn the floor over to Lisa and Tara to talk just about what referrals means.

Yes, it makes complete sense that we want to achieve more than referral.

We want to actually see people connecting and making progress in changing their circumstances.

So many of these categories that are summarized here are completed, you know, commencement of services, and I'll just read some examples.

So for substance use treatment, client attends intake or a follow-up appointment for maintenance of methadone, Suboxone, or Vivitrol.

An SUD assessment being completed, client attends or completes an outpatient or inpatient treatment program.

for behavioral health, mental health care.

Client receives mental health medication from a medical provider.

Client receives mental health counseling from a REACH or non-REACH provider.

Client creates crisis plan to mitigate harmful impacts of behavioral health symptoms.

So this is not recommending that somebody go somewhere and not being aware whether or not that actually occurs.

It's actually the commencement of a specific new service.

And then for lawful stable income, someone gains employment or successfully accesses government benefits.

So we appreciate and agree with this goal to more concretely display commenced services.

And so we'll work on a reporting approach that breaks that out for the future.

Appreciate that.

So the key takeaway is the need to capture it in the reporting function.

You're tracking it on the program side.

Yes.

Thank you.

And agree that that's the right question.

Yeah.

All right, well, with that, we're going to transition into the co-lead side of the contract here.

This first slide is going to be looking at enrollments into the program.

Clients are enrolled by PDA and subsequently, again, receive lodging services and connections to assist them in achieving permanent housing.

Through our contract development work, HSD and PDA agreed to a flexible approach in managing co-lead bed access.

We meet on a frequent basis to discuss how best to utilize this resource across competing needs.

And generally speaking, there are two pathways by which enrollments come.

The first are to unsheltered, LEED-eligible participants that are engaged through the community work we talked about earlier.

And the second pathway is preserving some bed access for city priority public safety and encampment response as well.

So the big takeaway here, we see enrollments rising from three in quarter one to 15 in quarter two, which also caused the occupancy rate to increase over 20 percentage points in that time to 75%.

The contract development work was really beginning in Q1, so it was heartening and encouraging to see the large increase within Q2.

And we are definitely looking to fully utilize the co-lead resource in this quarter.

And I just want to flag, I have some specific experience through work that's occurring in the Washington State right-of-way project, and the UCT, the Unified Care Team, and the city-funded co-lead beds.

So I have some specific experience where it's the city's reluctance to contribute city-funded co-lead beds to an encampment mitigation that may, in part, be driving some of these enrollment numbers.

So I just think it's important to flag that as well, since I think, as I understand it, the UCT, more than the Human Services Department, that's the gatekeeper for those resources in many instances.

So that's, I think, another area that we need to do more work on.

Lisa Dugard.

Oh, I'm sorry.

Yes, if I may, I just want to acknowledge the recommendation.

I will say that the City of Seattle is in communication with PDA on how to better utilize the bed.

So we see the opportunity.

We will continue those communications and happy to provide an update as we move forward.

Thank you.

I did not mean to diminish the recommendations.

I just meant to lift up the fact that there are instances where the PDA is ready to use the beds, but they're not being allowed to use the beds on some particular encampment locations that I'm familiar with.

Lisa Dugard.

So a couple of related points.

First, looking at the slide, what it doesn't come through here but I think is important context is that we came into January 2023 with existing city referrals into these beds.

So city funding of this resource started in July.

of last year.

And we have been collaborating with the city the whole time about, well, what is the best, sort of best highest use of this scarce resource, which is comparatively expensive, but has potentially profound public safety ramifications.

So there's obviously way more people that could use this resource than we have available.

So making smart, impactful use of it is really important, and being on the same page about that has been really important.

There's been, in the initial months, a tension, an acknowledged tension around placing individuals, which if we were just doing that, we could have been full on day four.

Placing individuals who are unsheltered and at high risk of exposure to the criminal legal system.

The court could have given us 50 people.

There are many sources that could have given us 50, 60 people.

But there was a desire to have a felt impact in specific vulnerable and impacted communities.

And so some of the work that we've been able to do with this resource is a project that involves more than one person being simultaneously placed into these city rooms.

Two examples.

One, the Michigan Street encampment, which was tackled this year at the city's request.

And we couldn't have done that if we had filled up all the beds.

There wouldn't have been room to do this collective resolution.

And that was by agreement, an intentional holding open of sufficient space to do that.

The other that occurred right at the end of 2022, which is why I'm calling out that people had come in before that point, was the Rosella apartment building in West Seattle, which was a situation with a lot of people who were very housing vulnerable.

They were essentially squatting in a large apartment building that was having a big effect in the neighborhood.

And so SPD, City Attorney's Office, and HSD all recognized that something needed to be done that was not just evicting, summarily evicting 45 people out into the very cold temperatures and with no plan on where to go.

And so the resolution was that we collectively, you know, resolve this group of people situation.

And that wouldn't have been possible if we were sort of already all full.

So I think we're through trial and error learning together what is the highest best use of this resource.

There has been some clarity in the last, I would say two months that we are permitted to place as many people from the Third Avenue Project, which is one of the lead focus impact areas as we appropriately can match to this resource.

And so we are doing that.

And as of today, basically we're essentially full because we have used, we've been asked to hold a few rooms open for sort of emergencies, but the Third Avenue Project can generate, you know, on its own, a full census for the city rooms.

So really appreciate, this is an evolving, strategy, I guess I would say, but we could do a lot of different things with these rooms.

We wanna make sure what we do do, we don't self-authorize.

So we wanna make sure that what we do do is accomplishing the city's objectives.

Yeah, and just on that point as well, really wanna thank Lisa for mentioning Third Avenue Project there.

Definitely, I think just calls out competing interests for these beds and having to look at system-wide what is possible and really wanted to focus in on the community work again.

For for these co-lead beds, so thank you PDA Similar to lead this slide shows a snapshot of co-leads caseload and the chart breaks it down by client and by quarter and client status and Individuals are either actively housed in co-lead lodging or receiving supports in aftercare, which is similar to LEAD's alumni status.

Aftercare indicates a client has exited from co-lead into permanent housing.

They do not receive that regular intensive case management but are still connected should they need support to remain stably housed.

I do want to make a critical note on this slide.

After putting this PowerPoint together and finalizing it, we did work with the PDA team, saw there was one inaccuracy on the slide in regards to the aftercare clients.

So in Q1, there were actually five clients in aftercare, not 14. This was done after just looking at the transition from 22 into 23 and breaking that down by funder.

And then in Q2, the number actually increased to 10 clients, which was comprised of those five clients from Q1 in aftercare and five new clients in aftercare.

So apologies for that.

That, again, should be aftercare for Q1 is five and Q2 is 10. That means the total number of clients served actually moved from 45 individuals in Q1 to 60 in Q2.

Critically, the number of active clients remains unchanged.

We did see an increase of 25% with 10 additional individuals residing in co-lead lodging.

In Q2, wonderful to see that increase in clients, again, utilizing the co-lead resources.

A continued need, though, to focus on that throughput with our partners and connecting clients with permanent housing options as well.

And I think, similar to alumni, we do want to dig a bit more into the aftercare.

status there to see how many individuals are entering and exiting the program once achieving that housing stability.

You can do now or on the next slide.

But globally, we obviously share the sense of urgency about being able to move people into permanent housing.

These units are best, they're temporary lodging, they're best used to work on housing barriers, figure out the best housing match, and then be able to work with new people four to six months down the road.

I think it's useful to contrast the other side of the Co-Lead House.

The other half of our funding comes from the state right-of-way money through Regional Homelessness Authority.

That project has dedicated permanent housing.

There, in that side of the house, we had 25 people move in Q2 into permanent housing, and here in Q3, we've had 24 people move into permanent housing.

So it gives you the, it's like a nice comparative study of what happens when there are housing units available.

Are the people able to move on?

Yes.

Is the staff incredibly good at moving people on?

Absolutely.

We hope that we can effectively work together with the city public safety leaders to ensure that people who have an impact on safety and order in the city can get priority access to permanent housing in the same way that those folks living on state right of way have been able to, because that will transform this picture.

So that's big priority for the rest of the year.

And I guess last comment.

We're starting to see some purchase on that with the Third Avenue project has now been incorporated into Partnership for Zero to access that priority channel of permanent housing through King County Regional Homelessness Authority.

That project literally just started this week and we're starting to nominate people.

assuming that goes well, next, the report for the rest of the year should look very different.

for the city rooms.

Great news that the Third Avenue Project has been incorporated into Partnership for Zero, especially given the priority access Partnership for Zero individuals have for permanent housing.

This is a conversation that we have long had about coordinated entry and the need for sort of a woven approach towards identifying vulnerable populations that should be prioritized for permanent housing, as well as populations who may be not only vulnerable, but have great impact to the surrounding community.

I look forward to finding ways to memorialize what you're doing with Partnership for Zero for other high-impact areas where you're doing work without a guarantee of permanent housing placements.

And our final slide here really takes a better look into those co-lead exits thus far.

In Q1, there were a total of five exits, with three to permanent housing destinations and two returns to homelessness.

The number of exits rose to six in quarter two, with all but one exit to permanent housing, which is wonderful to see.

So that means through two quarters, eight of the 11 exits were to a permanent destination.

Going forward, we're really encouraged by the numbers through the first two quarters.

And again, we hope to push for more permanent exits and fewer returns to homelessness as well.

Another area we do want to look at is reducing length of stay in co-lead facilities.

As you can see, as more exits occurred in Q2, the average days of, excuse me, length of stay increased from 166 in quarter one to 228 days in quarter two.

So I think that is also part of the larger conversation that we were just having about working to place folks in permanent housing.

And that's our final slide for this, but I do just want to say, again, a wealth of data and working with our colleagues at PDA that we're still parsing and working through, but definitely opening our eyes to more possibilities to come.

And even though...

I heard it said that the comments at the last slide could also be applicable to this slide.

What I think I hear you saying, Lisa, is that if we had a slide that we put next to this one, but use the partnership with WashDOT's right-of-way program, we would see very different outcomes for exits to permanent housing, higher exits to permanent housing, and perhaps lower exits to homelessness.

I will just take this opportunity to say it would be hard to have fewer exits to homelessness than we have.

These are very low numbers and something that we're very proud about.

We're working with people with very high barriers who have not been successful.

These are chronically homeless people who have almost never been successfully supported in shelter.

And so not having people exit to homelessness is great, but they do need to move on to permanent housing.

So yes, exactly.

If you look at the other side of the house, it's a well-oiled machine at this point, and people are being placed with good match that they're going to be able to sustain in.

We have an aftercare team that's ensuring that that's true.

We are working with people who are needs exceeds sometimes even for permanent supportive housing.

So we're helping people maintain that and not exit their housing placement to the street.

So that's pretty much what I know everybody is looking to see.

And so if you compare those two, we can see what's missing on the city side.

It's the same team.

It's the same population.

What's missing on the city side is dedicated permanent housing resources for this population.

So we all have that brass ring goal to show this piece sets that up really well, but it also backlogs if we're not able to introduce that.

Third Avenue Project is our pilot of can we Can we tap those resources for this city public safety group?

Assuming that works well, the limitation is just going to be there are not very many resources in that pipeline.

We, you know, getting resourceless three units yesterday in the entire system.

So you can see nobody is going to be able to show very fast movement of large numbers of people unless that resource grows.

All right, and that concludes our presentation.

Happy to take any other questions.

Thank you.

I peppered mine throughout, and I don't have additional questions.

Council Member Nelson, no?

I don't see any virtual hands, but I'll pause for a second to see if that changes.

not seeing any virtual hands.

Just want to say I really appreciate the key takeaways section on several of these slides.

It really, I think, helps all of us be aligned on what our sort of our north star is for the development and evolution of these efforts.

And look forward to this group of folks coming back, I think, in December to hear a quarter three report.

Thank you.

Thanks again for having us.

Thank you.

All right.

The next meeting of the Public Safety and Human Services Committee will be later today at 5.30 p.m., a special public hearing.

And then we'll have another special meeting scheduled for Monday, August 14th at 2 p.m.

If there are any planned absences, please let my office know.

And if there are no additional comments from my colleagues, the time is 1222 and we are adjourned.

Thank you.