Seattle City Council Gender Equity, Safe Communities, New Americans & Education Committee 5/22/19

All right.

Good morning.

Today is Wednesday, May 22nd, 2019. It is 9.32 a.m.

This is our regularly scheduled meeting of the Gender Equity, Safe Communities, New Americans in Education Committee.

I'm Council Member Lorena Gonzalez, Chair of this committee.

Joining me at the table are my colleagues, Council Member Teresa Mosqueda and Council Member Abel Pacheco.

Thank you for being here.

Good morning.

Thank you so much again for being here.

I'd like to really quickly give a chair's report and I'd like to specifically provide an update on some of the work being done by the city in the aftermath of yet another spike in gun violence in the Central District.

I know that all of us have been following that very closely and also hearing directly from constituents.

My staff and I have been in close communication with many local residents in that area, including those who attended last week's African American Community Advisory Council meeting at the Garfield Community Center.

We have also been in communication with the mayor's office, and I have had an opportunity to speak directly to Mayor Durkan.

about her ongoing commitment to community engagement in the Central District, which has been an ongoing body of work in her office since she has been elected, and really appreciate the ongoing work and attention that has been paid to this attention by the executive.

The mayor's office is coordinating multiple departments, including SPD, SDOT, and City Light to re-engage with community members and to do a neighborhood walk of some sort and visit, and a visit to recent locations of where shots have been fired.

City staff and community members will brainstorm possible crime prevention through environmental design, solutions and improvements to the neighborhood, which is something that the neighborhood has been asking for, particularly in the blocks around 21st and 23rd Avenues and Union.

I anticipate that this community engagement will take place over the next couple of weeks.

At the same time, the city is continuing to invest in and bolster many upstream interventions and gun violence prevention programs through its Summer Youth Employment Program, as well as a revised and expanded safety request for proposal, formerly known as the Seattle Youth Violence Prevention Initiative.

The Safety RFP is currently open for non-profit organizations to apply for grants on the City's Human Services Department website.

The application deadline for the Safety RFP is on June 13th at 12 p.m.

I will be publishing this additional application information in my newsletter this week, so folks can keep an eye out for that as well.

In the meantime, the Seattle Police Department continues to have additional emphasis patrols assigned to the Central District.

We heard that in committee a couple of weeks ago, on top of the seven other emphasis patrols in commercial areas that are being deployed during the month of May.

Additionally, SBD's gang unit continues to investigate the recent incidents of gun violence in the neighborhood, some of which they believe are related events associated with ongoing gang-related issues.

It's my hope that the mayor's office and the relevant departments will come before my committee in the month of June, hopefully by June 12th, to give us a presentation on some additional concrete steps and interventions that the executive plans to implement in the immediate future to stem the violence we're seeing in the Central District.

And so for those of you who might be viewing and interested in the subject and want to know more, you can reach out to my office at 206-684-8802, or you can email me at Lorena.Gonzalez, that's with a Z, at Seattle.gov.

Okay.

That's my chair's report.

Happy to answer any questions if any of you have any.

Okay.

We will go ahead and dig into the rest of today's agenda.

As usual, we will start with public testimony.

We only have one individual signed up for public testimony today.

As a reminder, each person that I call up is allowed to provide his testimony for up to two minutes on an item on the agenda.

And actually, before I do public comment, I now have to ask for the agenda to be approved, correct?

Okay.

So I'm going to rewind.

If there is no objection, the agenda will be adopted.

Just don't object.

I'm not objecting.

This is a new procedure for those of you who are watching us fumble through this.

Hearing no objection, today's agenda is adopted.

So now we will move into public comment.

Again, each person is allowed up to two minutes.

At the end of your two minutes, you will see the red light flash, and I will ask you to conclude your remarks.

Your public testimony today should be on a topic on the agenda.

If you go off topic on the agenda, I will gently remind you of the council rules that require you to speak about an item on the agenda.

So with that being said, we will go ahead and kick off public comment.

Our one and only speaker who has signed up is Marguerite Richard.

Good day, everyone.

I'm kind of vexed in my spirit because I don't see the monitors on.

I don't know how often that occurs, but that's what I mean by logistics.

I'm not a child, so I don't need to be spoken to like a child.

Am I clear with that?

Okay, so moving right along.

You have something that's very close to me, but I don't go there anymore.

She mentioned the advisory council to the police, and I'm saying right now that all of them are ineffective assistance is being rendered at said time.

The other situation is the domestic violence that occurred in my community over off of 3rd Avenue West in Mercer.

I didn't see what happened, but I came up at the time when the news media was there.

And when they flashed it on the news, it was somebody that people consider a non-European.

That was the deceased.

So I'm still very much concerned with all these different reform methods that people say that they have in place to deal with people that look like me, being gunned down, I don't see any change in terms of what I-940 was supposed to have done in relationship to people.

This is National Mental Health Month, so they said possibly that he might have had some substance in him or he might have been a little bit off kilter.

And a lot of circumstances, you don't know how they got that far.

Somebody can go and have a tragic accident and end up with a brain stem problem.

Thank you, Mr. Schor.

Your time is up.

Okay.

We're going to go ahead and move into the items of the agenda.

Roxanne, I'm going to ask you to read agenda item one into the record.

And while you do that, if you are here to Join us at the table in conversation around Bee's Law.

I'd ask you to make your way up.

Agenda Item 1, Council Bill 119513, an ordinance relating to the City of Seattle's Paid Family Care Leave Program for briefing, discussion, and possible vote.

Awesome.

Thank you so much.

Thank you, Roxanna.

Okay, I am really excited about this conversation and our consideration of this bill.

So we'll just go ahead and really quickly start with a round of introductions so everybody can tell us their name and then we can go ahead and go through and run a show.

My name is Dan Eder.

I'm the Deputy Director for Council Central Staff.

Rachel Alder, Beatrice's mother.

Erin Alder, Beatrice's other mother.

Adrienne Thompson with the mayor's office.

Great.

Thank you so much for being with us today.

I know we've had an opportunity to hear from both of you, Rachel and Erin, in council chambers before a couple weeks ago when we advanced a proclamation under the leadership of Council Member Mosqueda to declare, I think it was May 13th, as a day dedicated to Bea and her memory and her grit and her legacy.

So this is a continuation of that conversation and opportunity for us to really take an opportunity to look at some policy solutions to the issues that your family had to deal with as a result of a bit of a gap in our existing paid family care leave policies.

So I wanted to structure the conversation in a way where we could hear directly from Rachel and Aaron first and give you all an opportunity to just share with us what your experience was.

And then I'm happy to have the mayor's office sing us a few bars.

And then I'll kick it over to Dan to kick off the conversation around some of the policy solutions that we've been able to identify.

To both of you, thank you so much for being here and for your courage and willingness to speak up about your experience.

That's what it takes for us to be able to really understand how to modify our laws to make sure that they are truly meeting the needs of our employees.

So, really appreciate that.

So, please, take it away.

I just wanted to say thank you so much for having us here.

It's really powerful to think that where we were a year and a half ago and that now we are sitting here at this table making change in honor of little B.

So I just want to say I really appreciate you hearing us.

Great.

And I also just want to say thank you.

You guys heard us out.

Well, you've heard us out for a long time now, for the last year and a half.

And I think Dan here has a little bit of our story there that is perfectly worded.

So we're just glad to be here.

Thank you for inviting us.

Great.

Awesome.

Adrienne, would you like to share some remarks?

Yes.

Thank you, Chair Gonzalez and members of the committee.

I also want to thank Rachel and Erin for coming forward and telling their story.

It is the way that we can change city policy, and the mayor really appreciates you being willing to be courageous and share your story and actually change a policy to truly support our employees here in the city.

So we just really want to thank you for that opportunity to do the right thing and really follow the values that we believe as a city.

So the mayor is very proud to submit this legislation even though it's despite a very tragic situation for you and some of the other stories we've now heard from our city employees.

And we appreciate you hearing this bill today.

Also, in addition, ProTax 17 has been also very supportive in making sure that we pass this legislation.

So I want to make sure that they get highlighted as one of the champions of this.

So this is just an opportunity to fix a very much-needed gap that we didn't realize we had in our city policy with regards to when a situation like this happens with a tragic death just days away from giving birth.

The folks didn't have the opportunity, and not just Erin and Rachel, but other city employees didn't have the opportunity to really take the time that they needed to care for themselves, care for the family in this tragic situation.

And so the mayor felt it was important to fix this gap.

And this is the legislation that you have before you today.

And we encourage your support and fully support it through the city council process and pass this legislation.

in honor of Bea.

Thank you.

So, Dan, you want to walk us through the legislation as it currently stands?

I think what I have to do first, actually, is move for a substitute on this council bill, if I understand the procedure correctly.

Is that accurate?

That's exactly right.

Okay.

And the substitute is still the same council bill?

It's the same bill number, yes.

Okay.

I do not have words for this.

Let's see.

Okay.

So in order to be able to have a conversation about the revised version of Council Bill 119513, colleagues, I have to make a motion to adopt the proposed substitute.

So I'm going to move to amend Council Bill 119513 as described in the proposed substitute.

Second.

I don't know what was going to happen.

I'm thinking with you.

Okay, it's second.

It's still early.

Okay, so it's been moved and second and there's been a second.

Those in favor of the substitute version vote aye.

Aye.

Any opposed?

None opposed.

No abstention.

The motion carries and the bill has been amended to allow us to have a conversation about the substitute bill.

Dan, can we go ahead and have a conversation about the substitute bill?

And then really quickly, Council Member Pacheco, do you have a copy of the substitute bill?

Is this the one that's uploaded?

It should be.

Okay, great.

I'll be happy to do that.

The substitute legislation would change the paid family care leave benefit to provide employees of the City of Seattle with up to four weeks of paid leave following the death of a child.

The city currently provides its employees with a variety of types of paid leave, but circumstances left Rachel and Erin Alder's family without direct access to paid leave when they needed it.

Specifically, during a difficult pregnancy, Ms. Alder had used up nearly all of her accrued sick leave and accrued vacation leave.

When their daughter passed away shortly after birth, Ms. Alder found that she was not able to use the other forms of paid leave for the purpose of grieving her family's loss.

The proposed legislation is not intended to address every one of the many types of challenging circumstances for every type of family situation.

Rather, the bill would address the actual gap that was experienced by the Alder family.

The proposed changes would mean that all City of Seattle employees would get up to four weeks of paid leave if they have to grieve the loss of a child.

Some of the key proposed changes in the bill to the existing paid family care leave benefit are as follows.

The bill would add a new qualifying death as a triggering event, allowing employees to use up to four weeks of paid family care leave.

It would also define this term, qualifying death, to mean either the death of a child or the death of a domestic partner or spouse from childbirth or from complications related to childbirth.

Next, it would require that paid family care leave be used within 12 months of a qualifying death.

And finally, it would allow employees with a qualifying death to use paid family care leave without drawing down sick leave or vacation leave balances.

But for other currently allowed uses of paid family care leave, employees must still draw down sick leave to a maximum of two weeks and vacation leave to a maximum of one week before they can use the benefit.

The executive indicates that the law will have minimal fiscal impacts that can be addressed within existing resources and the city's reserve for the paid parental leave and the paid family care leave backfill.

We don't have a mechanism to identify exactly how many employees this might impact in the future, but it's thought to be a relatively small number.

Great.

questions about the policy or the bill.

I know Council Member Mosqueda and I have been working closely on this in the interim, but wanted to provide an opportunity for questions.

No questions, so we'll move to comments.

Council Member Mosqueda, do you want to go first on comments?

Sure.

Great.

Well, I have to note that as we're talking about the changes to B's law, the sun is shining directly on the piece of paper as if there is some illumination from B.

She is present with us today.

Also, notably, the sun has not come out this week.

And it is right here on this table.

So I just I feel like this is a huge first step that you guys have been fighting for for the last year and a half as you talked about.

We will keep fighting with you to make sure that we continue to amend the laws and make sure that that every family is able to not only have access to the time off that they need to grieve in the event of the death of a child, but that when that occurs to a family overall, that we will continue to extend this leave benefit to them.

So I do think that today is a really great day to highlight the fact that B's life lives on in this document.

Without your hard work, we talked about this last time you were in chambers, But without your hard work, your dedication, your advocacy, your tenacity to say that we are not going to just accept no for an answer.

I see PTE, sorry, Protech 17 sitting behind you.

Sean's here.

Without the full force of your story, B's story, the union continuing to say, no, this is a gap that needs to be addressed and it needs to be addressed now.

I don't think we'd be here.

A huge amount of appreciation for your dedication, for your courage to keep telling the story, because I can't imagine it's easy to tell it over and over again.

And for all the families that now don't have to go through the trauma and the unconscionable pain that you all had to go through, not just with the loss of a child, but then to realize that you didn't have that protection from your own employer to take time off.

We are making significant strides today.

And I think that there's some really important changes that you heard from Dan that I want to just lift up a little bit that I think are really key to making this policy work.

The first thing is we want to underscore that for all of our employees now in this city, In the event of a qualifying death, including of a child and a spouse, domestic partner that has had complications that resulted in death due to the birth of a child, there is now leave that's available.

And the second and third things are that that leave does not have to be taken once you've drawn down your sick leave.

You no longer have to expend the rest of your leave in order to be able to take this.

and it doesn't have to be taken concurrently, right?

So that really makes it its own important bucket that families can draw from in the death of, in the incidence of a qualifying death.

I think it's really critical because imagine, you know, having to do that drawdown situation that it sounds like you had to do during pregnancy and then to do that afterwards.

We just wanted to make sure the leave was there.

I think you said, in the unlikely event or in the unfortunate event that it is there, and hopefully nobody ever has to use it, but then it's there.

So those are the second and third things that I think were really important, eliminated the drawdown of the sick leave and vacation leave in the event of a qualifying death, and eliminated the concurrency.

And then finally, I think that this, it's worth mentioning that when we talk about, pulling stories to the table, quite literally having folks who've had the lived experience at the table, your voices have really resonated.

I think one of the things that we've seen with paid leave in the past, and this is true at the national level, is that we have not taken into account all the various scenarios in which people may need leave.

and having women at the table, having people of color, having members of the LGBTQ community, having folks who are experiencing the discrepancies in our public policies and in our healthcare system.

When you think about women of color specifically who have higher rates of death after childbirth, We are now bringing your stories to the table and changing policy.

So very excited about this first step.

And I know you were talking about your next advocacy effort.

So I imagine we will continue to be here with you as you take on the next advocacy effort.

And as Sejal was talking about, Sejal Parikh, you know, look what you've done in just a year and a half.

You've changed major public policy.

the largest employer in the city, and we will keep working with you.

So thanks to both of you.

I also just want to look right past the gap there and acknowledge Sejal Parikh, Chief of Staff, who's been working on this with you all for a year and a half, and Protech 17. Really excited about this day.

Thank you so much, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Councilmember.

Would you like to make any remarks, Council Member Pacheco?

I just want to acknowledge just the strength and courage that it's taken both of you just to tell your story.

Really to echo Council Member Mosqueda because I can only imagine the strength and pain but also just the courage that it takes to just come forward.

So, thank you.

Great.

Well, I also want to echo Council Member Mosqueda's comments on the bill.

I think she did an excellent job of laying out some of the key parts of the policy that have changed since the bill was first transmitted to City Council.

We feel really strongly that this substitute version of the bill is really well crafted and crafted in a way that is really going to meet the needs of parents who hopefully will, you know, if they find themselves in this unfortunate situation, will hopefully be able to have a much better experience with navigating the benefits that are offered at the City of Seattle.

I also just want to express my deep gratitude to both of you and really acknowledge the fact that you made a decision at some point to say something and to talk to someone about the gap.

And without that being the spark, we wouldn't be sitting here today.

And that's really, really important to acknowledge and to appreciate you all publicly for having the courage to, in a moment of crisis, to have sort of the wherewithal to be able to say, you know what, this is wrong and we need to stand up and this can't happen to other people.

So really grateful to you both.

Really proud of where we're at now and really excited about being able to vote this really important key policy and fix to the paid family care leave policies.

that the city has so that we can really truly meet the needs of families moving forward.

And I was really proud to be the primary sponsor of the city's original expansion of paid family care leave.

We had only previously had paid parental leave, and when I was elected, I had committed to expanding those family-friendly policies to include family care.

And I mentioned to you both when we met in my office last week that never in a million years had I imagined that this benefit would be needed in what is supposed to be a moment of immense joy.

And I'm sure it still was, and I know it still was a moment of immense joy, even though it was only 36 hours.

But it was a short period of immense joy.

And never in a million years had I imagined that It would only be a period of 36 years.

I don't think any of us had thought that that could be possible.

And so I really appreciate an opportunity to fix a gap and an oversight in our policy that was not intended to be there ever in the first place.

So thank you both so much for all of your advocacy and your work and really looking forward to seeing what else you're gonna bring to us that'll help us do right by our city employees.

I think we really pride ourselves in setting the standard of what good employers look like, especially as one of the largest employers in the region.

It's really important for us to make sure that we're that we're setting the standard high and treating our workers as well as we can.

So, really appreciate it.

All right.

Well, with that being said, if there's no other.

Just one more.

Always.

I just wanted to say, you know, I know both of our offices were working very closely with Dan Eder.

Thank you so much for your changes, your tremendous changes to the base legislation in a very quick period of time.

Significant, important policy changes were made and we really appreciate your quick thinking on that.

Thank you, and thanks for all the calls you answered and time you guys took to make this work.

Great, well said.

Thanks, Dan.

Okay, so with that being said, we will go ahead and I will move that the committee recommend that the City Council pass Council Bill 119513 as amended.

Second.

Okay, all those in favor, say aye.

Aye.

Any opposed?

None opposed.

No abstentions.

The motion carries and the committee recommends that the City Council pass Council Bill 119513 as amended.

We like to applaud ourselves every once in a while.

It feels good.

We will be in touch with you shortly after today's committee hearing.

We obviously are very proud of being an employer who has many, many employees, including yourself, who are represented by our fabulous labor unions.

And we are working with the law department to make sure that we are staying true to our standards and obligations around notification of items that might need to be subject to bargaining.

So depending on what advice and counsel we get from our law department in terms of how long that notice needs to be and how sufficient the notice has been thus far, that will determine when we can consider the bill in front of full counsel.

So we will certainly be in touch with you because we want you all to be there.

And we certainly want your family and friends who I know have been a rock for both of you to also be present in the room if they're available.

So we will be in close contact with you about the date.

Ordinarily it would be on Tuesday the 28th, but we'll again be in touch with you to confirm those details.

Great.

Thank you so much.

I feel like applausing again.

It's because it's a happy day.

Now the sun's on you.

And with that being said, colleagues, we are 10 minutes ahead of schedule, so I'm very excited about that.

So we will go ahead and move to our second agenda item, which is just a briefing and discussion.

And if you are here to present on the Domestic Violence Intervention Project, I'd ask you to make your way to the table as Ms. Gomez reads this into the record.

Agenda item two, domestic violence intervention project for briefing and discussion.

Thank you, Roxanna.

Good morning, everybody.

Good morning.

Welcome.

Good morning.

All righty.

So why don't we go ahead and begin with a round of introductions, and then I will hand it over to you all to walk us through the presentation.

Excellent.

So judge, you want to go first?

Sure.

And just a technical, who presses the advance button on the- Usually whoever, whoever drew the chair closest to the laptop.

Sweet.

My name is Adam Eisenberg.

I'm a judge in Seattle Municipal Court.

Lan Pham with the Seattle Human Services Department, Mayor's Office on Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault.

I'm Julie Huffman and I supervise the victim advocates at the Seattle City Attorney's Office.

Kenny James, I'm a probation counselor with Seattle Municipal Court.

I work in the DV unit.

Well, thank you all so much for joining us this morning.

I have the pleasure of sitting on the Domestic Violence Prevention Council as a council member and a chair of this Public Safety Committee.

So I am familiar with this project and think it's of real huge importance and interest to the general public to understand how this project is interrupting the cycles of domestic violence.

I think it's a really innovative project and really excited to get an update in chambers about the work that you all have been doing together.

So please.

Thank you very much for having us here.

Just to give you a little bit of background, the reason that we're involved in developing a new treatment model for domestic violence is because back in 2012 and 2013, the Washington State Institute on Public Policy did a study of domestic violence batterers treatment.

Domestic violence batterers treatment was sort of the traditional model, a 12 month minimum, one size fits all, everybody has to do the same program.

model that's existed for really like 20 years.

And the WSIP study, which didn't actually look at Washington State programs, looked at other programs and determined that it was really inconclusive whether domestic violence treatment as designed was working.

And from that point forward, courts across the state, including Seattle Municipal Court, really were struggling to figure out what to do.

And there's been this noticeable vacuum.

At the same time, on a statewide level, there is a development of revising the Washington Administrative Code to try to make domestic violence programs more flexible.

And into that vacuum, Human Services took the lead on trying to develop a new program.

So I'll turn it over to Alon Pham to kind of finish the history portion of our presentation.

Great, so thank you so much for this opportunity to present on the DVIP.

Seattle Human Services Department Mayor's Office and DVSA is super excited about this project as a convening partner.

As mentioned, it fills an immense gap for the region, and so as a convener, we are excited to be part of this.

We're excited about it also for a number of other reasons.

As a funder, it allows for us to really provide a holistic approach to ending gender-based violence.

There are also components of this particular project that are exciting.

I think one piece is really addressing the diversity of the city of Seattle and its growing population and race and social justice.

because the model itself really is looking at a client-centered approach or an individualized approach versus a one-size-fits-all better intervention program.

We also really like it for the fact that it is a partnership between government and community members.

So this partnership includes not only Seattle Human Services Department, Seattle Municipal Court, City Attorney's Office, but also a number of nonprofit organizations such as Coalition Ending Gender-Based Violence, The Salvation Army, ACT&T, Asian Counseling and Referral Service, and King County Public Health.

As mentioned, this is to fulfill a gap that was created by the WSIP report.

The WSIP report was really a study of 11 programs that used the Duluth model.

None of them was in Seattle, and all of them were very standardized.

The second piece was that in acknowledging that there's a huge gap, community members, victim service providers, as well as better intervention folks, and CDP Seattle folks have come together and really feel like we need to have a response.

The Colorado model with its component of being client-centered was really attractive to us.

It's also a best promising practice model nationally, and so we really wanted to learn more about it and adopt it and bring it to Seattle.

So the exciting piece is that as of June, we had a soft start for this project and we hope to have a full scale project starting in January of 2020. So with that, I'd really like to have my colleagues share more in details about the project.

So one of the things that came out of the WISPA study is that domestic violence is the single greatest predictor of future criminal acts, and the single greatest predictor of violent crime.

In addition, someone who's convicted of domestic violence is significantly more likely to commit future violent acts than someone convicted of other types of violence.

So there's a real need.

And to looking at the Seattle landscape, In the last five years, there's been an average of 1,800 or more domestic violence cases that are actually filed in the court.

Seattle Municipal Court is the largest municipal court in the state, and so we deal with domestic violence on a level really more than anybody else.

So those are the numbers of cases that are filed.

2017 was a bit, almost up to 2,000, but still consistently in the last five years, it's at least 1,800 cases.

So that's what's filed, but Julie Huffman, can I get more information about what actually happens from the prosecutor's side?

So we actually file a minority of the police reports that we receive.

Seattle's a bit unique in that we have a group of victim advocates that reach out to the victim in the case and talk to them about whether they want a court intervention before we file charges.

Now, that is their input.

We give that input to the prosecutor and the prosecutor makes the final decision.

But I will say during the years when we did not have a domestic violence intervention program to order people to, it was difficult for victims to say that they wanted to be part of a court process because what would be the point of that?

Most of the people that we work with and we get You know, we get over 3,000, sometimes closer to 3,800 reports every year.

And what we hear over and over from the people who are affected by domestic violence is that they really just want the violence to stop.

They want the behavior to change.

They may have kids together with that person.

They may have a strong relationship with that person, sometimes in other ways, but they really want the behavior to stop.

As a misdemeanor court, I think I am usually very proud that we're able to offer that as an intervention.

It doesn't always have to be jail time, doesn't always have to come with a conviction, but more often it involves ordering somebody to do treatment that maybe they had thought about doing before, but with that little extra nudge from the court, they might actually be able to follow through and complete.

Julie, the victim advocates that you're referencing, are those co-located with the city attorney's office or somewhere else?

So we are in the city attorney's office.

So there are community advocates and then there are legal system advocates and we are legal system advocates.

The difference being that We do not by law have confidentiality, but our role is to help victims as they're going through the criminal process, make sure they know what all their victim rights are, and then we also work really closely with the prosecutors to try to tailor an outcome to the criminal case that's really going to affect that family.

And how many victim advocates currently work at the city attorney's office?

We have nine.

It's eight and a half FTE.

Okay.

And what's the caseload for each victim advocate?

They get about 30 to 40 new reports every month, and so at any time they can have about Gosh, you'd think I'd have these numbers all memorized, but at any time, I think they could have between 40 and 60 open cases.

And we try to keep the same person with the same advocate, because a lot of these cases repeat.

We keep having the same people come back over and over.

And so our advocates, I mean, at times, we hope this doesn't happen very often, but unfortunately it does.

We will sometimes have an advocate work with the same woman or the same family for, you know, four or five years.

So, yeah.

And do you all, because I know there's a lot of folks who are doing victim advocacy work across the county and the city, including our friends over at the King County Sexual Assault Resource Center, for example.

Is there coordination between victim advocates at the city attorney's office and organizations akin to KSARC, for example?

Absolutely.

And then there's CASA and a bunch of other victim advocate organizations.

Yes, yes.

There is a lot of coordination.

I think we recognize the complementary roles that we each play where we can have, because we're in the criminal process, we can have more influence on the prosecutor, and we can speak in court for victims if they can't make it downtown.

It's kind of hard to make it downtown.

And so we play that role, but we recognize that our community partners play a much different role that involves confidentiality.

They can help with family law issues.

They can, you know, they have a much broader range in terms of their role.

And so we feel very lucky in Seattle that we have a great group of domestic violence services to refer to.

API CHI is doing great work.

There's a lot of very specialized specific services.

Northwest Network is another.

So we really do work hard to have, we have relationships with all of those agencies and do try to make sure that we are referring people and connecting them to those community resources.

We understand the criminal justice system, I think everyone does now, is not going to solve these problems alone.

So we really need to work together.

That's great.

Thank you, Julie.

So there are a couple of other valuable points that came out of the WSIP study.

One of them was that if you have a domestic violence program that incorporates mental health and chemical dependency treatment, that there's a 33% reduction in recidivism in the reviewed programs that they had.

The traditional batters treatment model did not actually normally incorporate that.

And the second thing that came out was that if you have an evidence-based approach to treatment, with intensive supervision through case managers, such as probation counselors, and a risk needs model that takes into account the individual's needs, that that can lead to a 16% reduction in recidivism.

These are separate concepts, but they've significantly informed how we've approached the Domestic Violence Intervention Project.

This is based on a model that was developed in Colorado in 2010 that really looked at individualized treatment.

The approach that we're taking to make DVIP most effective is, one, to provide an individualized treatment model that will hopefully give the individuals the tools that they need.

If there's mental health issues or chemical dependency issues, that's all incorporated in the intervention that's being done.

Secondly, we...

are recognizing the individual's needs in a way that no one really has done before.

We're also bringing in a victim's voice into the conversation, which is something that's not done in Colorado.

We're doing it by way of community advocates, as well as, in some cases, the actual specific advocates from the city attorney's office, so that that's part of the intervention conversation.

And finally, we are very conscious of the need to make this research-based.

So in the soft pilot phase that we're doing this year, we're developing all the different data points that we want to establish so we can be clear what's working, what isn't working.

You'll hear more of that in our presentation.

But we are trying very hard to correct the problems of the past by one, developing a taking the data as it's being collected or collecting the data as it's occurring as much as possible so we can actually do a real-time analysis and be set up for more detailed research analysis to follow.

At this point, I'd like to have Mr. James from probation discuss the actual steps involved in the DVIP program.

So, as you've heard, the goal of this program is to, and the treatment is to, individualize the treatment.

And one way to individualize the treatment is what we call a domestic violence risk and needs assessment.

And that assessment is completed at the treatment agencies.

We're working with two different treatment agencies, Asian Counseling and Referral Services and Anger Control and Treatment Therapies.

So the risk needs assessment, it takes into consideration several risk factors to individualize the treatment.

The risk factors include safety concerns for victim safety, violence towards children, other family members, any prior treatment that has been completed or not completed, It also looks into unemployment, mental health issues, chemical dependency issues.

The goal of the risk assessment is to assign clients to intervention level.

There's three different levels of treatment.

So that's the goal of the risk assessment is to assign these individuals to a level of care.

There's one aspect of what we identify as significant critical risk factors.

Those are risk factors that may include, you know, any use or threatening of use of weapons in the present incident or past incidents, any suicidal, homicidal ideations, threats, significant non-DV, criminal history, Any one of those factors will automatically place someone in the highest level of care.

So if I can add, one of the challenges, of course, in a risk-needs assessment is are people honest about what their issues are?

This is all self-reported.

Well, it's self-reported, but in addition, the assessor will have access to all the police reports that can be gathered if there's civil processes that have occurred, where there's statements made, all that criminal history, all that stuff will be provided.

But at the end of the day, it really requires a degree of honesty up front.

One of the things that makes our program unique is the city attorney has agreed to an immunity agreement.

So anything that a person says during the risk needs assessment or even in probation cannot be used against them in the current case and the city is not going to file charges based on anything that they They say, so we're hoping that that will also, that will assist them in being more honest about the actual issues they're dealing with.

So an example of that would be, for example, with the first significant critical risk factor, having a weapon or access to firearms.

So the immunity, an example there would be if you're not supposed to have a firearm or access to firearms because you have a pre-existing conditions of release or whatever the case might be or you're just legally not allowed to possess or be near firearms, then that immunity agreement at the city attorney's office would allow the person to acknowledge that they have access or current possession of a firearm without being charged for that violation?

Or would sort of a different set of laws wrap in in that context?

I know it's complicated.

And you picked probably the most complicated one of all.

I guess what I would say is that the city attorney doesn't control felony prosecutions, right?

Sure.

And Mr. Anderson is here who could probably address this more clearly.

But the reality is a statement made to a in the circumstance, I don't see how it would go beyond the context of that room.

But the city attorney can only offer immunity to cases that they can file.

Within their jurisdiction.

And to the current case, yeah, so.

But I will, I will just.

But council member, I also, I manage the firearms report.

Why don't you come up so we can actually, the audience can hear you too.

That's okay.

We should have probably had you on the agenda anyhow.

We didn't want to overwhelm you.

No, that's okay.

Why don't you go ahead and start by telling us your name and then you can ask.

I'm Chris Anderson.

I'm the director of the Domestic Violence Unit.

I'm also the co-manager of the Firearms Enforcement Unit, which is a joint city-county task force.

To answer that question, your honor, or council member, I saw Judge Eisenberg, I said your honor, but, is that our focus also in the firearms unit is to not necessarily file felony charges to remove the firearm.

So that information would be used to if it had a prohibited possessor, is to reach out and to try to get contact with that defendant and remove the firearm, not focused on necessarily criminal prosecution, which is really our focus here.

And then being part of this DVIP program, then that's our, we consider that when we're approaching this.

We're looking at stopping recidivism, reducing harm to victims, and are less focused on the criminal prosecution, which is kind of what we see as our portion of criminal justice reform on the front end rather than on the back end.

Right.

More of a harm reduction approach.

What you're trying to do is prevent that firearm from being utilized in a way that is going to really create death or bodily injury.

Right.

Right.

Great.

Helpful.

And I think it's important to note that majority of the information that's taken into consideration in the domestic violence risk assessment, risk and needs assessment comes from the police report, it may come from victim advocate's notes, it may come from the victim's statement.

So if there's mentioning of the weapon or a gun used in the incident or that the victim in her statement indicates that there was a weapon used or a gun or he has access to firearms, that's taken into consideration during the risk and needs assessment as well.

Great.

Okay.

So after the assessment is complete, the assessment then goes to what we call the multidisciplinary team.

The multidisciplinary team also known as the MDT team, includes the treatment providers, it includes probation, it includes system victim advocates, it can include community victim advocates, it can also include a social worker, a mental health counselor if an individual in the program is already engaged in services for mental health and or chemical dependency counselor if an individual is already engaged in chemical dependency services.

The goal of the multidisciplinary team is to, one, everyone has to come to a consensus on intervention level and a treatment plan.

We also are, It's also important to note that we, that MDT team is to ensure the progression and continuity of care based on the individual's needs.

So we look at the risk assessment.

We come to an agreement to finalize the treatment plan, intervention level.

We meet monthly to discuss progress of different participants in the program.

Another goal of the MDT team is to address some noncompliance issues without court involvement.

So if you have a client that is struggling to pay for treatment, we really try to wrap around as much support around that as possible to put them in a position to succeed.

Defendant participation, that comes from various sentencing types.

It could be a pre-conviction agreement, stipulate order of continuance.

It could be a deferred sentence.

or other plea deals with the prosecutor, or it could just be imposed as a condition of sentence, which is more like a suspended sentence.

Failure to pay for treatment will not automatically result in termination from treatment.

We really utilize the community resource center in which my colleagues will discuss, will talk about more detail later on.

We really utilize the Community Resource Center to wrap around as much support around individuals if they're struggling to pay.

We have employment programs that we can refer defendants to.

A lot of those employment programs come with stipends once they finish the program.

So although the point of it is to put them in position to be able to pay for treatment because we really We really value treatment and we understand how difficult it is.

There is no funding for treatment, unfortunately, so the treatment has to, it's paid out of pocket.

So we really try to wrap as much support around them to help them pay for treatment if that is a reason for their noncompliance.

What's the cost of the treatment?

The cost of the treatment is dependent on, it's dependent upon level of income.

The lowest end is $25 a week at the lowest end, and that's the sliding fee scale, and that's the cheapest.

We have vouchers that we give to clients that have little to no income or may be on a fixed income.

We have a voucher, and that voucher just covers the assessment cost.

But outside of that, the treatment is anywhere from $25 a week to about $50 a week, depending on your income.

to about what?

50, $50 a week.

$50 a week.

Okay, so the sliding scale is $25 to $50 a week.

And how long is the program?

So we'll get into that.

So the program is broken down into three different levels.

I think there's level one.

Next slide.

Oh, next slide.

Sorry about that.

Oh, I'm sorry, what?

Next slide.

Just to answer your question.

Yeah.

So the treatment is broken down at three different levels.

Level one is a low intensity.

Level two is medium intensity.

And level three is high intensity.

Level one is a minimum of six months.

And these are all weekly sessions.

A minimum of six months.

Level two is a minimum of nine months.

And level three is a minimum of 12 months.

And these are all, like I said, these are all weekly sessions.

You know, if you add up $25 to $50 a week for six months, nine months, or 12 months, it could be relatively expensive.

So we try to, you know, incorporate and add as much support around that need, if it is a need, and a barrier to someone being able to complete the program.

Is there, so in the King County Superior Court, sort of hearkening back to my days of practice, which weren't that, it wasn't that long ago that I was in active practice, but I know that there was a huge effort, particularly from the access to justice community around being able to establish a program to allow of folks based on income to actually be able to get complete waivers on the front end of court-related fees.

Can you just talk to me a little bit about the thinking around why we are imposing a fee in this case for people who could benefit from this program but who may not have access to resources to actually be able to pay to participate.

I appreciate that there's not a, you know, termination of treatment for failure to pay for it, but I guess I'm just a little curious about sort of what are the consequences if you fail to pay?

You know, are we creating, inadvertently creating debt for folks who are participating in this?

I know we've done a lot of work around legal financial obligations as well, and just want to get a better sense of sort of what are the actual consequences for an individual that gets behind on their sort of requirement to pay, and then sort of have a sense from you all about your thinking around a potential opportunity for waivers in those circumstances where people really can't afford it.

So I can address that, but I'm going to ask Tanya Dotson also to come up here for a moment.

Yeah, everybody come on up.

But the initial comment is, first of all, at least in Seattle Municipal Court under the RCWN, 35-22-5, which specifically addresses our court, we routinely will suspend fines and fees that were authorized to suspend pursuant to our own legislation or the legislation that affects municipal courts.

So in terms of any fines or fees that might be posed as part of the criminal case by the court, those are almost always suspended or waived.

So, the question here is the treatment provider and what they can do.

One of the things that's unique about our DVIP program is they've agreed to not cancel someone simply because they're not paying.

But treatment providers are in the business of, you know, paying their staff and obviously financially supporting themselves.

So, they are not able at this point in time unless we, you know, come forward with a plan to provide subsidies.

I don't think they're able to completely remove the obligation.

But I brought Tanya Dotson up here from Seattle Municipal Probation because I think she can probably answer more specifically what's happening on the treatment side with that $25 a week that they're not paying.

What do they do with that?

I'm Tanya Dodson.

I'm the manager for the domestic violence unit for SMC probation.

One of the things that happens with domestic violence treatment is unlike mental health treatment and chemical dependency treatment, you can go through your insurance to get that coverage.

There is no coverage like that for domestic violence treatment because there's not a diagnosis involved with it, and that's where I know it's very unfortunate and it's really sad because we think that folks should have access to treatment no matter their income.

So there's a gap in existing health insurance coverage for accessing this kind of treatment that's specific to preventing DV.

I would just say from I believe from the history of the domestic violence movement, there was always a push against making this a mental illness and trying to look at it more as a chosen behavior.

So there's, I think it's, and maybe that will change over time, but I think that that is part of it, that they have really not wanted it to be seen as a sickness, but more as a behavior that is chosen and reinforced by the community.

If I may add, too, on the funding side, our office actually funds two programs right now.

It's ACT&T and Asian Counseling and Referral Services, and it's for indigent batterers.

So folks who are referred to these two programs have either a zero fee or a sliding scale fee based on their income.

So we really want to be able to increase participation for everybody, regardless of their financial situation.

And both of those programs are actually participants of this particular project.

So it is really unfortunate that we can't offer it to everyone for no fee.

But our service providers have to be able to keep the doors open.

Many programs have folded.

There's actually currently only two programs within the city of Seattle right now that provide that service.

So there's limited money out there, and there's also you know, limited funding opportunities for these agencies.

Wellspring Family Services previously offered it, and they've now decided it's not part of their business model.

So it's really unfortunate.

A lot of them are just closing down.

So it's really unfortunate.

Thank you.

Can you speak to whether or not there used to be federal funding for this and whether that's dwindled over the years?

Has there been state or city funding, county funding through public health?

Or has this always been a gap and it's just now getting kind of daylighted?

Is there something that has happened at the national to the local level or do we need to step up because there's always been a gap?

There's always been a gap.

It's always been.

There previously was Sound Mental Health used to offer a program as part of their wraparound services, but it just wasn't cost effective for them.

So there's just always been a gap.

And it's really unfortunate because it's important treatment.

I think one of the questions you might ask is, why haven't we come and asked you to hand over money to pay for this?

And it's a little bit of a chicken and egg.

We're trying to develop this model.

We can't really show you progress much.

And so we are hoping down the road to be able to come forward and make some proposals.

But we want to do it in a really well-informed way.

that's kind of why we haven't presented anything yet.

We're still about nine months, almost a year into this pilot, the soft pilot, and next January we're hoping to make it a full pilot.

We're putting the research pieces in place and so forth, and I mean, perhaps we should consider presenting something that's more interim to the council to consider, and we'd appreciate your advice on that if you think that's what we should do.

I mean, I, go ahead, Council Member Pacheco, before I jump in.

Just real quick, you said that there are two service providers, correct?

Where are the two service providers located and where do you see the majority of your cases or individuals that are being serviced by the program located?

So the agencies, Northwest Family Life is in North Seattle.

Asian Counseling Referral Services is right off Rainier and MLK.

And it's throughout the city.

And ACTNT is.

ACTNT is south of the city.

They're in outside.

They're in Tukwila.

And where are the majority or where the, do you know geographically where the individuals who are being serviced are, where there's like zip codes or their residences?

Not right now.

And I'm just speculating.

Majority are from the Seattle area.

what specific or particular area or part of Seattle, it's kind of hard to tell at this point.

We haven't really looked at that data.

Okay.

I think that's a really good point and we will actually look at that data.

I think Council Member Pacheco is asking a district-based questions just to be super transparent about it.

So there is a real interest by the City Council, obviously we now have seven council-based districts that are, you know, geographic in nature.

And when we look at the network of service providers across the city in a lot of different spaces, not just this one, it's important for us to make sure that we're not creating, inadvertently creating artificial barriers to access the treatment program by locating the treatment that is offered through this program in in areas of the city that might not correlate to where people are actually living and would more naturally organically connect with those services.

So we, you know, we don't want to create a pop-out effect by, you know, forcing somebody who lives in, you know, close to 145th in District 5 to go all the way down to the Rainier Valley.

That could be a significant burden because we are all acutely aware of transportation needs and pressures of transportation in terms of moving around the city.

So if there's a way for you all to go back and evaluate the data and provide us some follow-up information on where the actual people who are participating in the program are located relative to treatment opportunities, that I think could be really helpful information for us.

I think one thing I would add is that The WACs revised last June, so different agencies are now having to get recertified to be able to do domestic violence treatment.

At the same time, we are actually reaching out to Northwest Family Life, to La Esperanza and other groups.

So, we are trying to reach out for cultural as well as geographic issues.

But part of it is also some of the groups have to get reassessed by the state.

So, I think what we will actually go back and try to see if we can gather the zip code data in particular and see if we can identify because I think that's really valuable.

Again, this is one of the things we're trying to do in the soft pilot years, like what data should we look at?

And that's really important.

I really appreciate Council Member Pacheco's line of questioning in this space.

I think it's super important.

We know that in North Seattle in particular, there's a massive amount of what Council Member Juarez refers to as service deserts.

And we certainly don't want to contribute to that concept through this project.

And since you are all in the soft pilot phase, it's a good opportunity to be more intentional around those particular geographic concerns.

And also, in addition to that, I think you bring up a really great point around how there aren't a lot of people who are actually, treatment providers who are actually doing this type of treatment.

So getting a better understanding of the inventory of the ecosystem would be, I think, an important additional layer to the data that we're asking you to produce so that you don't hear back from us and we're like, this is crazy, why are you only doing this?

And X place and my constituents live up here.

It's helpful to have sort of the full texture and context of why treatment providers are in a particular location versus another.

Great.

I'd like to address Council Member Mosqueda's question around funding.

I think most funders, up until recently, have only funded and really prioritized victim services, and this is not looked upon as victim services.

But I would really ask us to really look at reframing this, in which that's why I'm excited.

I'm going to use the word excited many times during my conversation here, because this is an exciting project.

Because in the human services, and our office is interested in this because we really see this as prevention because these folks are going to return to their communities.

And, you know, the intervention is one piece of it, but where it really connects to human services is that we also fund outreach education and community mobilization services in which we are looking at phase two to really connect it to the services that are offered through this court-mandated program.

Great.

So, we are a little over time.

So, I'm going to encourage us to move through the rest of these slides a little quicker.

So, successful completion I think is our opportunity.

So, as we discussed previously about the risk assessment in the MDT team, we now get to, successful completion of treatment.

That requires offenders to meet the core competencies as outlined in the newly revised WAC.

The WAC codes that's up there explains what those core competencies are.

It talks about the required cognitive and behavioral changes that clients must document through various homework assignments to complete the treatment.

I echo that completion of treatment is not based upon how many groups you've attended or how long you've been in the treatment program.

It's really about you meeting those core competencies and you documenting, you know, the required cognitive and behavioral changes through homework assignments.

There's various homework assignments that participants are given to complete throughout the treatment program.

And I forgot to mention this earlier, level four is the highest level of treatment.

And from my understanding, and you guys can correct me if I'm wrong, there's only one counselor, I believe, in the state.

There's only one provider in the state that is authorized to run a level four group, and these are individuals that their needs may exceed what a traditional domestic violence intervention program can provide.

So they score really high on that domestic violence risk and needs assessment.

And these individuals are usually displaced on probation to monitor repeated offenses or other conditions like mental health or substance abuse.

Thank you.

Could you talk a little bit more about how the provider desert that you just explained with only one provider at level four compares to other states?

How do we rank in terms of access to high needs treatment?

So actually, can I just jump in and say, so the level four folks are like, the serious sociopathic folks.

And if you put them in a group, they will actually distort the conversation in the group and in fact get more tools out of it.

So it's not a very large percentage, but Tanya can probably address.

We haven't had any yet.

We've assessed.

We have 82 folks in our project right now, and we have not come up with any.

Any level four?

No level fours.

And the WECs did just change that required a higher level of training for level four, before there weren't different levels.

And so I would imagine just over time that people will start you know, that people will become certified, and I just think it hasn't quite filled in yet with the change.

And there's, so there's a separate screening tool that's used to identify that population.

It's the psychopathy screening tool, and these are individuals who, are incapable and capable of having any type of remorse for their behavior or they may have extensive criminal histories and diverse criminal histories or multiple victims and multiple partners or problems that predates or is not related to substance abuse or mental health issues.

So these are individuals, again, like I said, indicated earlier that their needs kind of supersedes what a traditional bannerist program can provide them.

So just a follow-up question.

Could you talk more broadly, Ben, about level of access, how we, how our region compares to other regions in terms of access to level one through three care?

So I don't know if other states are, have these different intervention levels to include a level four.

In the state of Washington, in terms of our pilot project, like my colleagues indicated earlier, we haven't really had a level four.

So it's kind of hard to tell you what that looks like.

I think it's in large part because we're innovating here.

So we've taken pieces of models from other similar types of projects in other places.

I think Judge Eisenberg mentioned Colorado in particular.

So it's hard to have another apple to compare this to right now.

And especially with the wax just being revised, I'm not, I think we're truthfully on the cutting edge statewide in terms of creating these new three levels or four levels.

I don't think other states, many of them are even at that pace yet, so.

Great.

Just, I can briefly summarize the next, one of the things that makes this unusual, you've probably heard about drug court or other sort of intensive therapeutic courts.

We're sort of a middle ground where we do set specific reviews, a 60-day review to see if the assessment's done, a half-year review to see where they're at in the program, and a full-year review and then subsequent reviews.

That's in part to see how they're doing.

It's also in part to gather the data at those different stages so we can help set up research down the road.

We don't have, the MDT is able to address a lot of minor infractions, if you will.

So while we have the ability to set expedited hearings for, say, a new criminal law violation, or they've walked away from treatment, or they've significantly failed to comply with probation, our goal is that hoping that the MDT can really address individual needs as much as possible without having them come back into court.

If we cut to the next slide, I would just say that accountability is part of the expectation here, just like with chemical dependency or mental health.

But we're really focused on progress rather than perfection.

And we're really trying to tailor our responses to individuals so that, you know, it's definitely incorporating a harm reduction model of, okay, there was this misstep, what can we do to get you back on the path?

How can we facilitate this without having to take more serious action?

We also are, in addition to the research that we've been capturing into our data points, we're also asking people for their specific feedback, like we're calling them story logs.

And in court now, I'll ask, or Judge Gregory, who's the other domestic violence judge, will ask, you know, halfway through the year, so how's treatment going?

What do you think?

And people are telling us some really very positive things.

And there's a couple quotes that we've included that you'll be able to see where they're like, you know, I didn't think alcohol, I thought alcoholism was my problem, but this is really giving me really valuable tools, or this is helping me with my family dynamic.

We're getting some really positive feedback, and we're tracking all of that, too, so we can provide that kind of data.

I think just, Lon, if you want to finish up on the next steps slide.

So the next steps is that we are looking at an independent evaluator to be located at SMC, and this will allow for us to do evaluations and pre-sentence reports.

So there's been a job posting already, so any day now that position will be filled.

Next steps also include that we really want to be much more connected to the community.

So this is phase one, but phase two really includes some of the providers that our office actually works with and funds in terms of community mobilization, and especially for our agencies that work with specialized populations that come on board.

So, for example, Casa Latina, Somali Task Force, Mother Nation, Gender Justice League, those are some of the folks which have shown interest in being part of this process and moving forward.

The full scale evaluation program begin in January 2020, so we're really hoping to We're really excited about that process.

And something that's not on the slide, but in which as our role of convener that we're supporting is really locating federal funding to support this project and moving forward as well.

So we're actively looking for federal funding at this point.

Great.

All right.

Any closing remarks or questions?

I just want to add that we're also very much aware that there's gaps in terms of cultural competency issues.

You know, if you have a counseling session with 12 individuals and one person needs a Spanish interpreter and one person needs a Chinese interpreter, it's very complicated.

And how you provide that in the community, those are things we're looking at.

Also, LGBTQ treatment, we really need to actually develop a model.

There's not really tools out there.

There's one provider who apparently has had sessions in the past.

but doesn't actively do it.

So these are all things we're trying to address, gaps that we're trying to address so we can, you know, provide services to everyone.

So.

Yeah.

I appreciate the acknowledgment that that's a gap and I think that's an important first step to figuring out how to modify the program as we consider bringing it to scale in a way that is actually going to be responsive to the realities of who is in a relationship with each other and also sort of making sure that we're able to provide the treatment to folks whose language is not English as a first language and other sort of cultural competency issues also come through as it relates to gender-based violence and how in some cultures it is unfortunately very normative to engage in those behaviors and really sort of acknowledging that a treatment has to be people-focused and centered in order to really work for other cultures who who don't come from here.

So really appreciate the intentionality around wanting to address that complex issue.

Thank you very much.

Yeah.

Any other questions or comments?

Council Member Mosqueda.

Thank you so much.

Just two kind of follow-up requests.

One is thank you for your suggestion to bring back to us some interim either funding or policy strategies.

I'm sort of left with this feeling of wanting us to do something in the immediate and not really knowing how we can help, especially given the funding gap, given the provider gap, very much interested in hearing what those recommendations may be.

The second thing is I'm still struck by this kind of distinction conversation, I guess, that's happening around where this behavior falls on the mental health spectrum, especially when we acknowledge that if it's not treated early, then it does escalate, much like other types of mental health counseling, you want to get folks in early Just even acknowledging it at level 4 we would acknowledge that someone who falls into a level 4 treatment need what is clearly In need of mental health counseling and is not I mean does not have access to the behavioral health treatment that they need so Would you just follow up with us as that conversation?

evolves because I think that seeing this as a health care issue or a lack of a mental health issue could really help us as a society and better address these issues earlier on and thus I think perhaps even fill in the gap in the healthcare system where we've seen failures in the past.

So thank you for raising that.

I had not realized that that was a conversation that was happening in the advocacy or provider world and look forward to hearing how that conversation evolves and how we can potentially help advance maybe more innovative thinking around that, as you talked about.

Yeah.

I did note on my PowerPoint presentation when you were talking about those issues, budget.

So, I mean, I think, I do think if we have any, if we want to make sure that the data that you all are collecting is actually going to show a picture of meaningful intervention in an upstream fashion to prevent this behavior from occurring.

You know, we really need to be serious about equipping people who are participating in those treatment programs, even in a pilot phase, with every tool available to them to be successful.

And financial barriers can be a significant impediment to the richness of the data that I believe that the program could collect.

So we should certainly have follow-up conversations around what that might look like within given and existing resources that could be helpful.

And this might be a great opportunity for us to engage some of our private partners who might have interest in this space, who would be willing to perhaps engage in a conversation with us around grants as well.

Council Member Pacheco, any closing remarks?

Just going to echo what my colleague said.

Again, I think there's early promise in the program, and I'm really just looking forward to follow-up information.

So let's see what we can do.

Thank you very much for your time.

Yeah, thank you.

Thank you all so much for being with us.

Okay, we are running a little behind and as you can see, our audience is now full of all of these beautiful people.

Welcome to Council Chambers.

I know many of you will be joining us at the table for our last agenda item.

But for now, we have one more agenda item.

So I'm going to invite folks who are here to talk to us about the third agenda item, which is the Court Resource Center, to make your way up to the table as Roxanna reads this into the record.

Agenda item three, Court Resource Center audit update for briefing and discussion.

Wonderful.

Good to see you all again.

And I know that this is a long presentation with lots of slides.

We're running a little behind today, so I'm probably going to ask you all to sort of jam right through it.

This is just for framing.

I mentioned this at Council briefing.

Back in 2016, I had an opportunity to tour the Court Resource Center.

I was really impressed with some of the work that they were doing on sort of a shoestring budget and kind of in a scrappy-like nature, and really wanted to get a better sense of how we could generate a set of recommendations that could actually help the Court Resource Center become better resourced and better structured and organized so that it is able to fulfill its mission and really wanted to get a better sense of sort of what is the theory of change and the purpose of the Court Resource Center was also part of what was fueling my interest in requesting that the City Auditor's Office conduct an audit in collaboration with the Court Resource Center to really begin the process of identifying sort of where are some of the system issues that could be tackled to really create a much more successful program.

And I'm really happy that we are here now three years later.

And I'm excited to get the update about the implementation of some of those recommendations and really sort of hear a little bit more from you all about how the Court Resource Center has flourished in the aftermath of of that audit.

So those are my introductory remarks.

With that being done, I will go ahead and ask each of you to introduce yourselves for the record, and then I will hand it all over to you for the presentation.

Welcome.

Well, good morning, and thank you for having us.

My name is Anita Crawford-Willis, and I am one of the judges at Seattle Municipal Court.

And I'm Carol Bell-Daniel, and I manage the Court Resource Center.

My name's Betty McNeely.

I'm the Programs and Services Director at Seattle Municipal Court.

Hi, I'm Judge Faye Chess with Seattle Municipal Court.

Great.

Well, wonderful.

Thank you all for joining us this morning.

Let's go ahead and dig in.

All right.

And Council Member Gonzalez, you kind of did my whole preamble.

Great.

Let's move forward then.

So we move through just to kind of that historical piece and why we're here today.

Carol and I are going to kind of walk you through some of our enhancements, a short version of our journey that we've been on, but I'd like to start by really having one of our judges speak because she's due back in trial at some point here.

And so we're going to have Judge Crawford Willis talk about how she's able to use the CRC and how it weaves into the work of her court.

And then Judge Chess will speak later in the process as well.

Great.

And Judge Crawford-Willis, I hope you will hold your colleague, Judge Eisenberg, to account for the tardiness.

I will, definitely.

He's going to pay for that later.

As she said, I'm in the middle of jury trial, but I didn't want to miss an opportunity to come and talk with you and share my thoughts.

And as I think Councilwoman Gonzalez said about how the last presentation trying to provide a wraparound to help people be successful, well, that is exactly what the Court Resource Center is.

That's why from the very beginning, my tenure on the court is something that I've been involved with, committed to, passionate about.

And as I'm out in the community, when I see other groups that I think could add to our court resource center, then I talk with them.

pass them on to get them involved.

For me, there's not a day that goes by that I do not reference the Court Resource Center and refer people to go to the Court Resource Center.

We have so many amazing programs and partners there, and they'll talk about those later.

But every day, I refer people to go to the Court Resource Center.

Sometimes I even make it a part of their sentence because we have some classes, like I will hear someone say, well, this is what I want to do.

I want to get my life together.

I want to find out what I want to do in the future.

We have a class that deals specifically with that, helping people come up with goals and how to set your goals and then meet your goals.

I had someone yesterday who was was theft and it was because she said she didn't have clothing and I referred her to our Court Resource Center.

We have clothes at our Court Resource Center.

We have food at our Court Resource Center.

People can get a bus pass.

Just basic needs people can get met at the Court Resource Center and so it's a valuable tool for me just for the basics for anyone using from the bench but even for other things help for getting employment, help for getting their license back, a variety of things that Court Resource Center serves.

And so I'm excited that we're getting the word out.

And even in conjunction with our outreach program that we had held last week, you know, that's connected with our Court Resource Center.

Many people will be referred back there.

to continue the things that they started at the outreach.

So it's invaluable to me.

I totally believe in the Court Resource Center.

I think it's something that the court, it's part of our mission to provide that for people that come before us, but not just people that come before us, but to the community.

So I just want you to know that I appreciate When we came, you funded us so that we could expand, and we are using that money wisely.

The things that you asked Carol and Betty to do, they have been doing that, and I know that they'll be able to present that to you later.

If you have any questions for me, follow up, please feel free to reach out.

If you want to come over, I hope that you all have been over to visit our Court Resource Center.

If you haven't, I would invite you to come over and visit our Resource Center.

So with that, thank you for your time.

And I'm going to go back to my jury trial.

Thank you, Judge, for joining us.

And I'm sorry that we were running so late and that you won't be able to sit with us for the rest of time.

But really appreciate your testimony at the table today.

Thank you.

And one more thank you I'd like to make while we're here.

We really value the experience we had with the auditor's office.

And I'm not sure that's how people phrase this all the time.

But it really, it gave us an opportunity to look at what we could do to further advance our mission.

So we do have someone here from the auditor's office today if there's any questions.

Virginia Garcia, but I just wanted to kind of mention that.

And then Carol's going to kind of do a quick overview of what we have going on.

So, go ahead, Carol.

Well, out of the six recommendations that came through the audit, we really saw five as being our responsibility.

The first three here to increase the accuracy of the Court Resource Center's client data, to ensure adequate coverage of the Court Resource Center, And really part of that in number two was to work better and more collaboratively with the human services department.

The third was to improve the understanding of the court resource center's client demographic as well.

And then rolling into number four, really relying on that data and making sure that it wasn't self-reported and relying on what the clients were saying when they were coming through the doors.

And the fifth one was to monitor and use the Court Resource Center client demographic data to inform our decision making.

So in all of that, we took those recommendations and we kind of reengineered how some of the things were happening in the Court Resource Center.

The first of that being launching a new database July of last year and regularly training all the users of that database so that they can, accurately enter all of the information.

We worked in partnership with the Human Services Department and we were able to secure $88,000 of grant funding just for the term of 2018, or actually really the second half of 2018, and we used those funds to help enhance the Court Resource Center.

In terms of understanding the client demographics, we looked at data elements that include the income, employment, their language, their educational attainment levels.

And we also changed some of the documentation that we're using for clients when they're coming in and making sure that it was user-friendly and that we have a more guided process when we're collecting that information from them.

We were able to hire a person temporarily to cover the front desk to do all of our help guide the client intake process.

So that's something that is still kind of a work in progress for us because it was just temporary funding that we got from HSD for that.

But just looking at where we are since the audit, we've got seven new partnerships.

We have the Hepatitis C Project, Novos, Pioneer, Goodwill, the Center for Human Services, Cowlitz Indian Tribe, Goodwill, and we revamped our relationship with the YWCA.

That's great.

Some of our program enhancements.

Before we were doing an employment class.

Now we've kind of taken it to another level.

We're working with two agencies, that's Pioneer and Urban League.

Both of them have employment readiness programs that we're able to directly refer clients into.

So they come and they'll do an orientation for anyone that signs up, so that be the public or any court users that are interested in either attaining better employment or just basic employment or job training skills.

We also have our life skills class, which was originally just being held at the court.

Now we've taken outside the court walls and we're having it twice a month.

Actually one's happening right now at Seattle Public Library.

We have the self-awareness workshop that continues to serve court-involved clients as well.

We have our marketing materials, which we believe is a little bit more user-friendly than the information that we provided to clients before, really outlines all that is available to them, whether it's the employment workshops or housing, food stamp benefits, food, clothing, hygiene, things like that.

And is this online or is this a paper copy?

So we have both.

Both, great.

We are in the midst of revamping our web presence as well.

And this is what our database really looks like when we're using it on our side and tracking all of the client information.

It's kind of small for you to really kind of see, but like we want to know everything from all of the information that they're, what it is that they're seeking and what they actually were able to obtain when they were there.

You know, one of the things when you came back a few years ago and kind of saw what we were doing on our kind of shoestring, I like the word scrappy, that was excellent.

One of the things we really relied upon were our volunteers.

And that's how we kind of managed without assigned staff to the area.

And so we wanted to let you know that we've continued with The support of all of our volunteers and our interns that come to us.

We have almost 15 different universities and schools that people are coming and doing their internship at the court.

And so one of the, really one of the states that happens for many of our students is at the CRC, so.

One of the things that we realize is that everybody doesn't want to come to us.

We are working on our partnerships external to us, and so we have some relationships that are really referral-based, whether they're referring clients into us or we're referring individuals out to them.

Like an agency like Aurora Commons, maybe they are able to give one bus ticket to a person, but we're able to give them one.

So they'll refer them down to us to get some of the, wherever there are gaps in services, we kind of work in partnership that way.

And as you're probably really familiar with is that we're doing our warrant outreach events and we're really kind of changing the name of that because it's gone way beyond just warrants.

We started out the first, I'll say two times, just looking at warrants and how we could help individuals with that.

But as everyone comes out and they're sharing what their needs are, we're expanding and building on the services.

Last week's event, or almost two weeks ago now, we served over 250 clients and actually Gave them the things they needed and when they walked out of there They said they were able to accomplish more in the hour to that there than they could in a month's worth of time Yeah, because everything was there readily available to them and we had everyone there from the division of child support to the King County Up program, Goodwill was there providing employment related services, King County Metro, the ORCA program, we had someone there that was working with people that get tickets or citations for riding on the light rail or on the bus and aren't able to resolve them.

And we're actively working on how we can better meet the needs of individuals that are coming in needing support with relicensing or some of their citations as well.

Yeah.

And so you all are helping with not just Muni court tickets and resolving those, but I'm hearing that you're saying that you're also addressing the needs of people who are getting tickets from fare enforcement on transit system.

We were able to have a representative come out and support with that too.

Wow.

Or if people have multiple tickets, which is not unusual in the fractions, in let's say in Burien, in Federal Way, in Seattle, different parts of King County, there's a consolidated program that we kept really, really busy.

at our event recently that took place at Garfield Community Center.

So we've done our fifth event so far.

Last event prior to this was in Delridge, which was very successful, the Garfield Community Center.

And we're starting to do some outreach right now for the next event.

We always base them at parks department community centers for many reasons.

One, it's so, it's really worked out to leverage other city departments and to be able to use that infrastructure that's already there.

And so next event you'll be hearing about soon will be coming up and we've moved them all over the city of Seattle.

I think one of the things that we looked at with the community centers is having a place where it's kind of family-friendly, user-friendly.

People go into the community centers already, so there is a comfort level.

I know we still are working on the concern that this might not be legitimate.

where we're really there to resolve warrants because of stings that have happened across the nation in other forms.

But we really want the community to know that we're there to support them and hopefully move them along and out of the criminal justice system.

Well, you all have come a long way on these workshops and events.

I mean, I think the first one you had maybe 50 people.

Maybe.

Maybe 50 people.

And to go from that to 250 people last week I think to me shows that the legitimacy of the program and sort of the trust that people are starting to develop in the fact that they can go there and actually get services as opposed to it being a ruse where they're going to get, you know, busted on a warrant is, it's working.

So I think, you know, continuing to use our trusted messengers within those communities is a super important part continuing to build that legitimacy to make sure that folks aren't too scared to show up and receive those services.

So well done.

Thank you.

Oh, I'm sorry, Council Member Pacheco.

Just a quick question.

What outreach do you do in the jails themselves?

Well, I can talk about that.

Oh.

So when I'm in the jail, a lot of times folks are just like, I want to get out.

And so particularly at the time of sentencing, I will ask them what's their goals, what's their plans once they get out.

And a lot of times they will talk about the stresses of not having housing or maybe they had to get to a job and now they've lost that job.

So, I get to hear a lot of different things that's going on once they are released.

And so, I will refer them to CRC.

So, for example, they'll say, well, I'm unemployed.

And then they'll say, well, you know, with my history, I probably won't be able to get a job.

I'll say, wait, hold on.

And then I'll go to the computer.

Every day, CRC sends us information about who the providers are that are showing up that day, also about career fairs.

For example, the Urban League may be doing an employment fair.

And then I'll talk about, here, this is the date, this is the time.

and they're giving people second chances.

They are actually looking for people who have your history.

And the attorneys are so used to me providing that information, they literally start giving the information to the individual as I'm speaking to them, or even before I start speaking.

because I'm trying to make a direct connection.

Another thing is about our branding.

One of the things I emphasize is that it's not a program just for those who are in custody, but it's a program that's for the entire community.

So anybody can come in and utilize it because I think there's some fear base that the fact that the program is housed within our courthouse.

So I let them know is this is actually a program that's available to anybody.

So that's kind of how you see it work in the jail, particularly when I'm running the jail that day.

Thanks.

Great.

Any follow-ups, Councilmember?

Oh, well, I just, because I remember from just some lived experience of being a victim of a wrongful arrest, there's flyer information inside of the King County Jail about bail bonds.

But a number of men that I met that night, I knew we both knew that they were going to likely lose their job.

And it almost, it didn't matter how any of us had gotten there.

It was how can we figure out a way to support them, get them some stable employment so that, because there are organizations out there that are helpful and supportive.

And so that's what I found curious was why, bail bond information is available next to the phone, but not information for places of employment or a flyer or some notification because by the time you go from your release to your court date, it could be several days.

And so that's why I thought to myself.

It actually physically sits on a table with all the other paperwork, so when they're getting their paperwork for their next court date, also what the court conditions are, I'm making sure that they actually have a brochure or the document in hand, and then I explain to them what it is.

This is four years ago, so I'm...

Yeah, so, but we're trying to make this not as, oh, by the way, the CRC, we're trying to make it as part of the portfolio of information that they receive before they walk out the door.

Thank you.

Okay, let's go.

Again, we have another slide really that focuses on the human services department support last year because really it was key to us having an administrative specialist that could staff that front desk as well as securing some different operating equipment that we needed and some furnishings like signage.

We have a couple of retractable signs that we have that we use there internal at the courthouse so people can know where the court resource center is.

That was a big thing when you all came over and toured.

Everyone said, we need a sign.

We really don't know where you're at.

And we're able to take that also into the community when we're doing different events.

We want to be able to show you some of our numbers real quick.

And so if we forward to CRC utilization and demographics, you'll notice it's only over an eight-month period, and that's how long we've had our new database in place, which has really increased us being able to validate the data that's being collected.

So during that time period, over 3,000 folks came through the CRC.

We project that we're averaging about 4,000 people a year that are coming through and utilizing services.

And those are all individual visitors, not visits, but visitors.

We break that down a little bit, but usually I think it's, I'm going to let Carol speak to it, but the majority are unique visits.

There's some people that come back a couple of times, which we encourage.

So that may be.

Just a little bit more about, I guess, the utilization there.

One thing that we note is it continues to be more, the majority of our clients coming through our mail, 70% you'll see there, and the majority of them still are reporting that they're either unstable or homeless.

Also, we note there that our court clients, nearly 80% are folks that have current involvement somehow in the court, which leaves about 20% that are non-court clients.

In terms of racial breakdown, about 40% of them are white, 30% being African American, Hispanic at 9%, and we have about 12% that are under, are unreported.

And again, with some of these, there are certain things that as we're screening the clients in, doing the intake form, we don't require, we tell them that we would like this information, why we want the information, we're just trying to increase our access to services and have an accurate data, but we don't require them to provide information on their race or their sexual orientation.

All of that is optional.

Council Member Pacheco?

I'm just curious, do you have any reason or just, not necessarily a reason, but any sense of why disproportionately we're serving more white Caucasian white individuals as opposed to black and African-American or Hispanic and Latino when they make up the majority of jails?

You know, I'll say that everyone that comes through the doors of the court resource center, I mean of the court, have the opportunity to come in.

There are some people that will avail themselves to services a little bit more easily than others.

And some people do want to stay around and participate in other activities such as coming to the core resource center and being able to access some of those services and some of them don't.

I really can't explain but I guess that is something that we'll continue to look at in our research in terms of the client demographic that we could probably report to you out later.

Yeah, if there's a policy or potential funding in terms of outreach, something that could be helpful, just I would say as a recommendation for us would be helpful.

Yeah.

It would also be helpful to just sort of, this slide is a little hard for me to draw any conclusions from related to disproportionality without knowing, without knowing a little bit more granular detail about the jail population, for example, or the, court-involved population that is coming to SMC.

I suspect that Council Member Pacheco's statement that it appears to be disproportionate in terms of access is accurate, but it's hard for me to draw a clear conclusion based on just this slide.

So if you all have information related to the demographics of the court-involved clients that are sort of overlapping or that we can overlay this with, that could be helpful in evaluating whether or not there are some additional supports as identified by Councilmember Pacheco that could move the needle on those access issues.

Right, because there is a piece of where we're located and what this homeless population looks like versus in north or south Seattle, things like that, that makes a difference.

So those different pieces.

We do have other, some information that is not reported in here today that we'll be able to share with you all.

Yeah.

The other thing is that we really have intertwine the work of the resource center into our more traditional probation work.

So anyone that comes to us on formalized probation, one of the first thing that happens day one is they're connected to the resource center.

So that also is going to be interesting to look at in regards to numbers.

So we'll keep that in mind.

Great.

Super helpful.

OK.

So just in terms of utilization and demographics, you'll see that about 75% of those that reported in had an income of $20,000 or less.

So they're either from $20,000 to no income.

When we're looking at the top 12 services, the first thing people are looking for really when they come in is clothing.

then the next thing they're looking for is food.

So we're either able to support them with food stamps through DSHS or food bags that either we manage through different donations or agencies like Emergency Feeding Program provide food bags, whether that's a snack pack or a full grocery bag, depending on the client and where they live and what they're able to transport with them is how we decide what we'll provide them.

but nobody goes away hungry as long as we have food.

Now looking at this piece of housing, we have a 538 people that came in looking for housing.

It's an interesting thing because we don't have housing, but we have referrals like most of the community.

And so we are trying to work more closely with agencies that maybe have a direct bed space or have some kind of fast track into different forms of housing.

Maybe that's through an employment related program like the Urban League where they may have some type of housing associated with the employment program.

And just in terms of our visitor experience, we're really working on this piece of doing exit surveys.

And that's follow-up with clients, whether that's via phone, email, or while they're right there in the office to see how they felt they were supported through what we were able to provide to them.

So 83% said it was either somewhat or very helpful.

Just looking where we are for 2019 and what our priorities are, you can see right there in the center is we really want to increase individual health and stability of all the clients that come in.

We want to be able to provide and use data to inform our decision making.

We want to expand the number and availability of onsite services.

We want to improve operations and service delivery.

And we also want to increase accessibility and community engagement.

And then we've given you some really, some numbers to look at on what our internal goals are on improvement.

So like housing assistance, you know, we really have an ambitious goal when there's no housing dedicated to us.

But we want to be able to connect people with as much services as we can.

So these are our internal kind of goals that we have and we will be measuring those as well.

I really wanted to leave time for Judge Chess.

to kind of give you a little bit more of a judicial perspective, because I think that that has been so crucial to kind of having this project move forward and what we're doing.

So one of the things that I like is that I get a way to offer more than just words.

A lot of times the folks that come in front of me don't see much hope.

and they don't have much as way of even personal items.

And so before this, judges were left with just a sentence and I hope you don't come back here.

I actually now am able to say this case is over at this point, however, we are here to continue assisting you.

through housing, the referrals, the job programs, food, clothing, and not just now, but in the future.

As we all know that when a person is in the system, it takes years, months to change about the things that got them there in the first place.

And they need a hand up.

and that the court can be seen as a tool and instrument to help them move forward and not come back.

I remember talking to a gentleman who was in front of me who had not had employment for years.

And he was sort of like, you know, with my history, I'm just never going to get a job.

And I was able to say, That is not necessarily true.

There are agencies who offer their second chances.

And because of the information coming out through the CRC, as I mentioned earlier, I could talk about the agencies such as the Urban League.

and to give actual dates and times.

His face literally lit up because I didn't just say, there's this agency out there.

I'm like, no, they're having an employment fair.

They are, it's going to happen here.

I actually can also tell them who's employing, like QFC.

I had a conversation with one, another person.

I said, courtesy Kurt.

QFC is looking for courtesy clerks.

They are going to accept applications through this method.

And I think the level of trust is different because I can be that specific about what I'm talking about.

And I also think I'm highly encouraged on the fact that the attorneys that are in the room with me help assist me in giving that information to them, that they are feeling this is an important service for the community to have.

And that just kind of solidifies the trust.

And so I guess I would be very sad if I did not have the CRC in my toolbox, especially on the jail calendar.

I really would.

Thank you.

Really appreciate you sharing that perspective.

I have been a fan of the CRC for quite some time and really appreciated your all's willingness to partner with me on having the city auditor do the evaluation.

I think you all have done tremendous work and really risen to the occasion in terms implementing the recommendations of the City Auditor's Office and really going beyond that, frankly.

So I feel like the Community Resource Center, I'm going to start using that now, the Community Resource Center has really been a complimentary and good addition to the the suite of services provided at the court and now within community and really hope to be able to see an opportunity for you all to continue to leverage those relationships with community-based organizations that really helped to build the trust and the legitimacy of a program that is located within a courthouse.

So really, really appreciate you all's work and effort.

And, you know, Carol and Betty, you all have done really tremendous amount of work on this program, and I really appreciate it.

And I'm sure that you all will continue to innovate and really think about how to continue to do improvement to the programs, which you all have referred to as program enhancements.

So I think it's, I think there's a lot of continued opportunity here to continue to meet the needs of people who are already coming into contact with the court.

So really appreciate it.

Any other comments or questions?

Thank you, Madam Chair.

One of the things we had a chance to talk about when we visited in my office was the desire to have sort of what we're calling the vacation event.

I know that that framing could potentially lure people in.

They think it's a vacation event.

But similar to other cities, just specifically focusing on vacation of past charges would be really exciting.

I know you offer a tremendous amount of services.

I think the chair and I were chatting about it might be interesting to see how many people had access to social services after they left your event, like Medicaid, utility discount program, food stamps, et cetera, but specific to just the vacations that may be causing fear and limiting people's ability to get those.

employment positions.

I would love to follow up with you about sort of a vacation only event, and we can put some really cool graphics on that, and people would come in for their vacation event.

Just to let you know at our last event at Garfield Community Center, we actually had DPD, public defenders there, their civil side, and there was three attorneys there throughout the day, and they were meeting, they were one of the busiest tables we had, And they were meeting with individuals about people wanting to expunge their record, other matters that maybe that they had some questions about that may be holding them back from future goals.

And so that's a new addition this last go-around.

Very successful and we'll continue to expand on that.

But they were a great partner with us in this event.

That's wonderful news.

Really appreciate it.

And colleagues, if you haven't had a chance to go visit the Community Resource Center, strongly encourage you to do that.

It's literally across the street.

Very easy to get there.

And Betty and Carol are some of the nicest people you'll get to spend an hour or 30 minutes with.

So really strongly encourage you to take them up on their tour offer if you get a chance to do so.

Thank you all so much for being with us.

Really apologize for the delay in time, and we're going to go ahead and move to our last agenda item.

The last agenda item is a presentation on ready to work.

There's only about eight slides, colleagues, so I anticipate that we will end close to about 1145, if that's okay with you all.

Sure.

Okay, great, perfect.

So if you are here to present on our last agenda item, I'm going to ask you to join us at the table while Roxanna reads this item into the record.

Coming up, Glenn.

Agenda item four, ready to work for briefing and discussion.

Thank you, Roxanna.

And Glenn, I apologize that we are running over time.

I know you brought a big audience with you, which we always appreciate.

And because we are running behind a little bit, I'm going to ask that we try to end today at 1145. So that is in about 15 minutes, because I know we're going to start losing committee members.

OK.

So I think, thank you, by the way, and welcome to.

All the students and teachers should come to the table.

Yeah.

OK.

So we have some more folks coming up.

Yeah.

No, that's OK.

Don't worry about it.

So what we'll do is I'm going to forego my slide presentation and go right to the students and the teachers and a graduate of the Ready to Work program.

So we can follow up communications on the slide.

But there's just one slide maybe real super quick.

We should.

This is a little slide you could refer to later to kind of see the evolution of the Ready to Work program, which began in 2015 as a result of advocacy from the community for beginning English language learners.

And since then, the program has grown with the support of the Council.

And the only other background I would give is who our partners are in the program and that we're running a combination of ESL and employment programs, community neighborhood based.

So let's just turn it right over.

I'm going to introduce Alex Owens from ACRS.

And why don't we do a quick round of introductions so that we know each other's names.

So if we can just go around and everyone say your name, and then we can go ahead and hand it over to the students and teachers.

My name is Yasin.

Hi, Yasin.

Hi, I'm Alex Olins from Asian Counseling and Referral Service.

Hi, I'm Taeko Aoki-Marcial from Literacy Source.

Let's make sure that microphone is on.

Is it light green on the stem?

Roxanne, I can go over and help you.

Yes.

Yes.

OK.

Now it is.

OK, great.

My name is Amal Mohamed.

I'm also from Literacy Source, and I teach the level one, level two class at ACRS.

My name is Ahmed.

I'm from Southwest, a ready-to-work student.

My name is Elaine Wright.

I am the teacher in West Seattle with Literacy Source.

Hello, I'm a student from North Seattle Literacy Source.

Hi, I'm Sarika.

I'm from Ethiopia.

I'm a student at Jarvis.

My name is Megan Dalton.

I'm the teacher for Level 3 Ready to Work with Literacy Source.

Great, well, welcome to all of you.

Really appreciate you taking the time to join us here.

I know that you've had a busy day going around City Hall and whatnot, so really excited to hear more about your specific experience in the Ready to Work program, which I am a massively huge fan of.

Thank you for your support, actually, to the whole city council.

We really appreciate it.

So we're going to start with Yassine, because he needs to get back to his job.

And Yassine is a wonderful example of how we can impact people's lives when we have the time to work with them.

for the long term.

So Yacine, welcome.

Thank you.

Yeah, my name is Yacine.

I'm from Djibouti, East Africa.

So I do remember that back in 2016, I was a one-off ready-to-work student.

At that time, I wasn't have any work authorization.

So I got a lot of support from ACRS, job training, classes.

Then when I got my work authorization, they got me the first internship in order to get back to my accounting field.

That was a huge thing for me.

After that, they helped me to apply for my first accounting job.

So I got a lot of support.

I know that when you are new in a new country, you don't have any landmark, so they were my landmark.

So that led me to get my permanent job as an accountant today.

And that's the job you're going to go back to right now.

Yeah.

Do you want to say where you're working now?

Yeah, I'm working at Treehouse.

Oh, that's wonderful.

As an accountant.

Yeah.

So you want to say how we helped you get back to the field a little bit?

Yeah, so they helped me to for the translation of my credential, because I have a French diploma.

So they help me with my credentials, translation, and the equivalence, too.

So that you can use that credential here in America for employment in the field that you were trained for.

Yeah.

So a lot of thanks from ACRS and my case worker, case manager.

Yeah, they, too, helped me a lot.

There he is.

Hi.

Great.

Thank you, Yasin.

So he's back to working in his profession.

His English is obviously excellent.

He also speaks Somali and French.

And we believe he's a huge asset to the city of Seattle and this country.

And we're so glad that we were able to work with him.

That's great.

Yasmeen, thank you so much for being with us and for sharing your story.

We're always really happy and excited to see the successes of the investments that the City of Seattle makes in organizations like Literary Source and others who really help ACRS, et cetera, who really help us make sure that we are focusing on workforce development with a really strong lens on what it means to support and empower our immigrant refugee community members.

to be their full selves and to really be able to contribute fully in the things that they love to do.

You went to training for accounting, something I would never be able to do myself, and really appreciate the fact that you participated in the program and are here to share your story with us.

Thank you.

Thank you for having me.

Thank you for all your support.

Oh, that's so great.

You guys are going to make me cry.

And if you have to leave, no worries.

You can leave whenever you want.

All right.

Thank you.

Bye.

My name is Taiko, and I teach for the North section of Ready to Work.

I also used to work with Alex at AACRS, teaching that class for the first two years.

I love this class, and I love being able to work with so many interesting and intelligent people from all over the world.

And I feel fortunate to be a teacher and curriculum developer for this program.

Yeah.

And yesterday, we talked a little bit about City Hall and the City Council and what it was in preparation for coming here.

And we discussed representation and representatives.

And today, our representative for our class who is here to speak about her experience is Zheng.

Thank you, Zheng.

Okay, my name is Zheng.

Today I'm honored to share my experience here and I feel a little bit nervous.

That's okay.

My broken English, sorry.

Your English sounds perfect to me.

So, let me introduce myself.

My name is Jane.

I came from China in 2015. I don't speak English a lot because I'm here with my family.

But right now, I live with my deaf son.

Before I came to the United States, university education, and I worked as a music teacher for 15 years in primary education.

And I don't have any experience with my English.

So keep on study for English well, that's my especially important so far.

One of the reason I...

could get work like re-employment.

Another of the reason I could get work, I could get as a support to my children, teaching him speech therapies.

So however, I don't know Well, who can help for this?

Until I went to the Lake City Library, I found the information from there by chance.

They are about little resource school.

I was lucky they accepted me.

I have been studying there over one year.

Right now I'm in ready for work class.

Before I am available have a job.

And let me see.

And while I'm prepared for a job, I also could learn a lot new vocabulary around job training, such as we learned about job application, writing resume, using computer, searching a good job title, join a job file, work on safety.

This term we learned to get a food worker card and so on.

I will keep going on.

Between my class study, we also learned many ways, such as reading a story about a taxi driver.

computer skill practice, conversation with my classmate, writing practice, and so on.

This class is range and flexible.

I very like this class.

So I think it's necessary and important.

I also learned sharing, caring, respect, and helping each other in leader resource.

So thanks all my teacher and my tutor.

I will keep it if I can and get more opportunity and chances.

So that's my experience.

Thank you.

Thank you, Jane, so much for sharing.

Thank you, Jane.

Thank you.

And I know Council Member Mosqueda, unfortunately, has to leave us a little earlier.

She has a conflict.

But thank you so much for being with us today.

Thank you.

All right, next.

So my name is Megan Dalton and I teach the Ready to Work South Level 3 at Rainier Beach Library.

Something that I think is very special about the Ready to Work program is that we teach English language skills combined with workplace readiness skills.

and college pathway planning.

We really want our students to get good jobs, sustainable jobs for their families, and to be able to plan their futures, the futures that they want to have.

So that's very special.

Not every English language program has that combination of different kinds of planning and job help and English all together.

So I feel very honored to work in this program I also have the honor of introducing my student, Tarikwa.

She is representing our class from Level 3, Rainier Beach.

Are you ready?

Yes.

I am Tarikwa.

I am from Ethiopia.

Sorry, we just need to get that microphone a little closer.

There we go.

There you go.

I am Tarikwa.

I am from Ethiopia.

I am Janata.

I have lived in Seattle for one year.

I like to cook and work.

I am ready to work.

We have studied writing, reading, listening, sentence, speaking, and spelling.

This quarter we talked about food safety.

I wanted to go to college.

I wanted to get a job.

I wanted to have a family.

My teacher is helping me with reading.

My teacher is helping me writing.

Thank you so much.

We can applaud.

Hi, I'm Elaine Wright.

I teach the Ready to Work West program, which is a Level 3-4 class.

We are the newest Ready to Work program.

We started in April of 2018. And it's held at Neighborhood House in High Point.

Our class is unique because we are able to offer not only the case management that all Ready to Work classes offer, but we also have child care on site.

And because of that, a lot of students are able to attend the class and come regularly, which I think is really special.

Another special thing about Ready to Work is that we are able to be flexible and react to what's happening in the community.

We can adjust our summer schedule to figure out how people are going to be able to make it to as many classes as possible.

And I think that that's a real asset to the community.

I'd like to introduce Ahmed Budo.

He's been a student in my class since September.

And because we have childcare, his wife is also a student in our class.

So I'll leave it to Ahmed to explain what we've been studying this quarter.

Are you ready?

Hi, everyone.

My name is Ahmed.

I'm from Ethiopia.

I am living in southwest Seattle, Washington.

I have four children.

I'm living with my family.

We are learning We're learning for writing, spelling, reading, word, more sentence.

I took test on the computer searching.

I get a food worker card.

My future goal is I want to be a store team leader at Whole Foods market store.

I study English, spelling, writing, conversation, and more sentence.

Finally, I want to say thank you to all CRO city council leadership because you support us for comfortable and very well.

As the children, child care in the gas car, we organize teacher also by, we love our teacher.

Thank you, Elaine and Kelly.

Thank you.

Thank you.

My name is Amal Mohamed, so I teach the Level 1-2 class over at ACRS.

It's a beginner level class.

Also, we learn basic computer skills such as typing, sending emails, accessing Google Doc.

Some of the projects that we've done in our class is a timeline of basically their short-term and long-term career goals of what they want to achieve.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

Anything else anybody wants to add?

1145.

Just one thing really quick.

Our students, I know we don't have time right now, as we were talking about representation and being an active community member, we had came up with some questions for the city council if there had been time.

So maybe we can email you.

the questions that we talked about, because I don't think we have time for each person to ask the question, but they did have questions about their neighborhoods and their communities that we would like to.

Absolutely.

And we're always happy to welcome you back as well, so we can have an opportunity to have a face-to-face too.

I will take my cues from Glenn as to an opportunity to be able to do that.

And if we, the next time we do it, we could also prepare a more comprehensive report about the impact of the program, the outcomes and what we've learned.

We're happy to take the questions and answer them for the class.

I think that's a really important part of civics and just education around making sure that everyone understands how you can access people who represent you.

You know, for people in the audience who are here, I'm really proud to be the daughter of an immigrant myself.

My parents came to this country in the 60s from Mexico, and they came here with no money, no understanding of the English language.

My mom and dad both taught themselves how to read, write, and do math in Spanish.

because he only had two weeks of education back home.

So I understand what it means to make sure that we're supporting our immigrant and refugee families through workforce development, education opportunities, and a mastering of the English language.

I was my mom and my dad's translator and interpreter.

for everything, and I still am.

My mom still speaks, she speaks some English, enough to get by, but I still have to help her with her paperwork and with really complex, hard doctor visits, for example, and so I really understand why it's important for the city to invest in you and your families and the success of your children, and so I'm really excited to be able to bring my own immigrant family experience to City Hall to be hopefully a good representative for all of you and your children and your families.

So really excited and moved about the stories that I've heard here of success.

And I know that there are so many more in the audience that we didn't get a chance to hear.

really excited about continuing to support this program.

And for those of my colleagues, Council Member Pacheco, if you haven't had a chance to visit one of these classrooms, highly recommend it.

It's inspiring, the amount of work that you all do and the hope that comes with these classes.

is not measurable by any report that we could ever produce at the city.

So I just really appreciate both the teacher and the student's commitment to this resilience program.

Council Member Chico, anything you'd like to say?

No, just expect a visit, a follow-up.

But, you know, it's not lost on me just in terms of this moment where we had all three of us here being children of immigrants.

And so, just I'm mindful of that and I know that I speak on behalf of this committee of just saying you have as much of a friend and ally in both your office and the work.

And so, like Councilmember Gonzalez said, you know, I'm also a translator for my parents, for my mom specifically.

And so, when those doctor visits do come around or wherever I can be of service to her, everyone knows, I'm pretty sure everyone in this council probably knows about the love that I have for my mother.

But I say that just in terms of all of you.

I wish you all the best of success in the program, and I'll be coming by soon.

Thank you.

Anything else, Glenn?

No, thank you so much for the time.

And thank you, because part of this was part of the curriculum as well.

Oh, good.

It was to bring attention to the program to the council, give you a bit of an update.

but also it's part of the learning and engaging in civic life in addition to learning and working.

Awesome.

I really appreciate that.

So we're going to go ahead and adjourn today's meeting.

We'd love to have an opportunity, Council Member Pacheco, if you have some time to, after the cameras turn off, gather together and maybe take a group picture.

Does that sound okay?

Group picture time?

All right.

So with that being said, we are adjourned.

Thank you.