Recording in progress.

Good afternoon and welcome to the Alameda County Border Supervisors Social Services Committee meeting for Monday, September the 22nd, 2025.

May I roll call, please?

Supervisor Fortinata Paz.

Present.

Supervisor Tim.

Present.

Thank you.

At this point, can we just have quick instructions on remote participation?

Online participation.

If you are joining us online, please raise your hand when public comment begins.

Or if you're calling in, please start dial star nine and wait until your name is called.

Thank you.

So our first item is the informational item that's the annual reporter of the Veterans Affairs Commission.

Andrea Good afternoon and thank you, Supervisor Tam.

I would like to ask the Greg Owens, Chair of the Veterans Affairs Commission.

Approach the podium to present the good afternoon.

Like I say, I'm Greg Owens.

I'm the current chair of the Alameda County Veterans Affairs Commission.

And thank you for inviting me to give you an update on the Veterans Affairs Commission.

So next slide.

Okay, so the topics we're going to review.

We're going to go over the Veterans Affairs Commission, what their purpose is, the past initiatives, the current initiatives, and then we'll also talk about the Alameda County Veterans Service Office, CVSO, their purpose, overview, results, challenges, consequences, and recommendations.

We do have some representatives here from the CVSO.

If you get if there's our questions that I can't address.

Next slide.

Okay, so the Veterans Affairs Commission, the VAC.

We're going to do uh the annual update.

So next slide, please.

Okay, so the topics okay.

So the topics that we're going to review the purpose of the Veterans Affairs Commission, our past initiatives, our current initiatives, and then same for the Alameda County Veterans Service Office, CVSO, the an overview, the results, the challenges, consequences they face, and some of our recommendations.

Next slide.

So the purpose of the VAC.

We advise and assist on veteran issues as they pertain to pertain to, excuse me, food, shelter, transportation, employment, and veteran benefits.

We also sit assist uh with veteran observance days, we promote and develop identified needs of the veterans and their families.

Uh review the annual uh status of veteran benefits, and we also research matters so services are coordinated and maximized.

Uh and we submit recommendations uh regarding uh veteran services.

Next slide.

Okay, so initiatives uh from July of 2023 to the present.

Uh we do countywide outreach.

And what do I mean by that?

We move our meetings, we do we have monthly meetings, and we move them around.

Uh we try to hit a lot of the colleges.

We've done Alameda College, Chabot, Cal uh Cal Berkeley, uh Los Basitas College, then we also hit uh Veterans Memorial Buildings in Alameda, Hayward, San Leandro.

So we try to move those meetings around so we get some uh clear visibility.

And when we visited those, we visit those colleges.

We also will take a look at their uh Veterans Services Center to see what how they're presenting this to uh the veterans and if it was any of the veterans that are students at those uh colleges, if there's something we could do to help them.

Uh the standalone VSO campaign.

I can get into that a little bit more right now.

The VSO office is in East Mont Mall.

Uh, we're looking for, but that's combined with a lot of other social services that are going on.

Uh but as in other counties, we'd like to have a standalone uh VSO for our veterans when they come to the VSO that they're not standing in line with others that they get uh attention right away.

Also the Richard Avallier uh annual luncheons, we do that every year uh round Veterans Day, and we do observance uh day events, uh uh self-explanatory.

I say three Oakland-based stand downs as of this last uh Friday and Saturday.

We have now four.

Uh we saw uh at the uh stand down at uh St.

Vincent Nepal, just uh here in Oakland.

We saw over 180 different veterans.

We have provided services for them, whether it be homeless services, job employment, like I say, housing.

We also had that, we had a barber, we had uh uh dental hygienist, we had a medical van, uh, and one of the big things is legal.

Uh we had uh from the from the county, we had judges, uh, we had uh attorney uh attorneys to help uh these uh veterans uh with a clean slate.

Uh and there were 30 different vendors there, so there was everything you can imagine that a veteran might uh have a question about.

So it was a it was a great event.

Uh we also provided uh showers that day and a free lunch, and they could stay overnight if they needed to.

And being where it was there at St.

Vincent de Paul, that's the reason we have it there.

That's where we see the greatest need, where we have a lot of homeless.

Uh so it was a great event and it was well received.

Uh the Black Veteran Historical Corridor.

Uh we had renamed three different streets at the uh Oakland uh Port of Oakland for uh different veterans, uh some historic uh black veterans.

Operation Green Knight.

This is something we do around uh on uh Veterans Day.

We try to get the city uh cities and uh and county buildings lit up with green lights to recognize uh to recognize Veterans Day.

We've had two women veterans' uh recognition days, and we do that at the Naval Aerostation Alameda Museum, and that we've done that twice now in the evenings, and it's very well received.

We get to recognize uh women veterans.

We've done two tours of the Santa Rita Jails Veteran Pods, very eye-opening for us to walk through and see uh what's going on in the uh Santa Rita County jail.

There are our pods for veterans and then for them to get their life turned around, get some training and be able to go out and find jobs afterwards.

Uh commissioner recruitment.

We have uh 22 spots on the commission.

When in 2023, we had 12 filled.

And now we have 21 filled, and currently we have the 22nd, he's already been approved, and all we're waiting for them to be sworn in, and we'll be 100%.

We'll have all 22 spaces filled.

We'll give ourselves a pat on the back for that one.

We have a transportation committee that works with the different mass transit we have here to see what uh services or what benefits uh veterans can receive, especially disabled veterans, and then award recognition where awards are at uh needed and seen we make sure that they get awarded.

Next slide, please.

Okay, so initiatives from the present to uh the end of the year.

Again, we'll we'll uh stand we'll keep going on that standalone VSL campaign.

It's my understanding that we have a site identified, and hopefully by the end of the year, we'll have that standalone uh here that's supposed to be in Hayward, and we'll have that standalone so that campaign uh will hopefully come to a conclusion.

Uh suicide prevention uh collaboration.

We've done two of those.

Uh we just had uh earlier this month a uh suicide prevention forum.

Uh we did this at the uh Hayward uh Veterans Memorial Building, and it was it was a great thing to make people aware of the problem we have with veteran suicide and what can be done to try to reduce that.

Uh stand-down events, like I said, we just uh completed the last one of the year.

We try to do two, or probably our next stand down will be June of next year.

Countywide outreach, that's what I was just saying as we move the meetings around.

Veterans Observance Days, we make sure that uh every veteran observance day that is celebrated, and we try to locate the different spots and get the word out uh where those different uh events are.

And there will be another Richard Valier annual luncheon that we will attend again around Veterans Day.

New commissioner recruitment.

Well, we're 100%, but you never know.

Somebody might drop out and we and hopefully we got people waiting in line to these commissioners, just so that you know, they're all we're all veterans and have a lot of experience.

There's a lot of talent on that uh on those 22 commissioners.

Okay.

Uh women in black uh veteran historical corridor.

Again, we're looking for more places where we can recognize women and black veterans.

Again, ward recognition, Operation Green Knight.

Uh hopefully we see these county uh buildings lit up for Veterans Day, and we'll be that'll be an initiative that we'll be getting out.

And then justice involved veteran outreach.

This is one thing that we had at the stand down.

Like I said, we had legal aid, we had all kinds of uh support there uh for veterans that need legal assistance, and we make sure they we put them in touch with those.

Uh the Cash Roe Valley Library proposal.

Again, this is one of the sites that we'd like to see uh the VSO uh be present.

Next slide, please.

Okay, the purpose of the VSO.

Uh again, this is a veterans uh service office, which uh we have they come to all of our meetings, we get input from the VSO to the commission about uh how it's going at the VSO where our veterans are going.

So they provide uh uh Alameda County veterans and their families and surviving special spouses with world-class veteran services.

Uh this is a world-class uh department, and this will be accomplished with a highly trained, dedicated, uh qualified staff.

I uh say qualified, that's very important, who render a full spectrum of veteran benefit and services assistance, which clients, when I say clients, I'm talking about veterans and their families and other dependents, may be eligible for uh a professional, empathetic, uh highly competent and efficient manner, and to represent the county of Alameda and observance of all of its core values.

So the Veteran Service Office in uh county and state is funded is a funded agency that was established in 1944 to assist veterans, military personnel and their families in obtaining federal, state, and local benefits earned through the active duty military service.

A veteran service officer is trained, accredited, and provide assistance with veterans, their dependents, and their survivors.

Next slide, please.

So the overview of the VSO, you can see maybe I don't need to read all these, but you can see that the benefits review.

These are all important.

This is the reason the training is so important for a VSO officer, because these are all the things that they need to be well acquainted with and be able to address once uh when one of our veterans or a family member walks into the office, helping them with the disability compensation, uh their service connected or non-service connected pensions, death uh benefits, uh, their pension dependency, uh burial benefits that comes up pretty often, health care benefits, VA education benefits, uh state and education benefits for dependents, very important, records assistance, DMV verification, and income verifications at outreach.

All these these I can't emphasize that much how much this is important to our veterans that aren't aware of the different services that's available to them.

Next slide, please.

So here's some of the stats that we I've gotten from the C of S C VSO that have been put to the Alameda County Veterans Affairs Commission.

So the type of contact, as you see, there's 500, this is the first quarter only, uh, 544 emails, seven mails, phone calls, 270, virtual visits, 61, in-person visits, 397 uh voice voicemails for a grand total of 1,704.

So they entered 416 claims, 82 were awarded for a total of 672,941 uh dollars, 12 cents.

Okay.

So moving on to the second quarter, please.

Okay, you see it's increased quite a bit here.

So they had 82 emails.

You can see the uh in-person visits have uh increased, voicemails increased out in general, everything has increased uh for a total of 2,210 and 198 awards.

So new awards 1,248,049.

So that's a significant increase.

But to me, that's just a just a little chip off the iceberg.

There's a lot of veterans that are still not reaching out.

So the word has to get up.

And I think with the the new veteran service office where they could walk in and be seen right away and and be respected as a veteran.

Uh, not that they're they are now, they are now, but uh I think that's going to make a big difference where we actually get people walk into the in person in an in-person service.

Next slide, please.

So some of the challenges that we hear from the the VSO is staffing, and it continues to be a challenge versus the size of the customer base because the customer base is huge in Alameda County, especially in the like the Oakland area.

But from what I'm being told, they're about to get completely staffed up again.

But it takes a lot of training and certification before we have a uh VSO officer that can be uh put to work.

And it's a high stress job and the high performance standards.

Uh and like I said, recurring accreditation requirements to make employment, and it makes it hard to retain uh and recruit uh VSO.

Uh so lobby uh logistics, there's no separate VSO uh center in the like they are in neighboring counties.

Santa Clara, uh Contra Costa, there's not only just one VSO, there's different satellites that they can go to.

That's something that we would like to see more of in Alameda County.

So access to resources, affordable housing, medical, dental, and mental health, it continues to be a barrier in veterans in Alambeda County.

So some of the consequences, what happens because of these challenges increasingly to the VA benefits, including health care, mental health uh treatment dependence benefits, uh that results in lost revenue uh spent in the county.

And an increased rate of veterans that are unhoused.

We could see that Friday and Saturday when we were we saw a lot of unhoused veterans that we were trying to get uh help.

Uh and we have some partners working with swords to plow shares uh and some others that are very helpful that are trying to help us with that.

So less taxpayer dollars are spent in the county and because of this, increased rate of incarcerated veterans equals decreased public safety.

Uh again, uh us touring the uh Santa Rita jail was was eye-opening, higher unemployment rates within the veteran community.

So if we're trying to get uh these uh veterans employed and get them uh contributing back to the community.

So untreated mental health challenges contribute to an increase rate in suicide.

As I said, we're trying to address that's certainly a real the major reasons for suicide is uh unemployment.

Next slide, please.

So some of the recommendations that we have from the uh Alameda County Veterans Service Commission is potential VSO office, as I've already mentioned.

Uh we have that in uh Eastmont Mall, but it's not standalone.

We're looking for the standalone.

And I think we are working on some.

I see Hayward there.

I think that's going to be another location.

But some of these others are places that could be.

So it makes sense to see there, you can see in the writing.

Uh and we would recommend maybe an approved web page, uh, social media presence and consistent use later pup uh publication.

And uh more training for VSO staff.

I think that's happening.

Uh but the more training the better and uh more productive they could be uh helping our veterans and to conduct outreach during the monthly AC and uh VAC.

Uh the VSO uh veteran service office does attend our meetings, and we certainly appreciate the feedback we see at that time.

We would like for them to the uh VSO to provide monthly or by monthly statistics.

Those statistics that I uh showed you earlier are quarterly.

We could like every month, we'd like to see what's going on, and things are getting better, or is it declining?

We'd like to know.

Uh and the develop resources to conduct extensive outreach, you know, weekly crisis outreach and provide virtual walk-in sessions.

Okay, and the VSO is involved in the justice involved veteran uh and re-entry.

So we making sure that they are and and they are involved in the justice involved veteran program, re-entry.

Uh next slide.

And that's my presentation.

Are there any questions?

Thank you very much for that very thorough presentation.

Um, Supervisor Forton Abbas, questions or comments?

Yes, thank you so much.

Really appreciate learning more.

Um I do have a couple questions.

I am curious to hear more about the relationship between the federal veteran affairs and our county veteran VSO.

Is there any duplication of services sort of?

Or is it um you know, really that we are delivering locally some of those federal benefits?

Well, the federal benefits.

Um, the VSO uh I think they are coordinating any benefit that needs to uh come to our local veterans, the VSO is aware of and they are uh making every effort to make sure that those are passed down to our veterans that contact their office.

Okay.

And are you noticing any trends over the past year in terms of safety net services that are in higher demand, for example, with the federal budget bill that was passed?

Are there more questions about health care or food assistance or anything like that?

Well, I could let the VSO speak to that, but I can see that in their statistics that because there has been a lot of legislation lately.

There's legislation on You know, California was the only state in the country that was taxing uh retired pay.

And recently uh a bill was passed, I think is uh signed in now that there will be some uh relief for veterans that are receiving a pension from the state, so that we're not paying state income tax uh on all of our.

I think the first 20,000 would be uh tax tax exempt.

Those just an example of uh the different legislation that's coming in that we're uh the DA, not only the VSO, but the DAV and a lot of the other uh agencies are in the VA all making efforts to make sure we get all that information out to our veterans.

We just got to make sure they're enrolled in those things.

So we gotta make sure they're enrolled in the VA, they're contacting the VSO office, and we make every effort to get out there.

We get addresses for all veterans, especially the DAV is really good about that and reaching out to them.

But if they don't come to us, it's hard for us to find them.

Thank you.

And then finally, um, I do work closely with District 5's appointee to the commission, Omar Farmer.

We actually worked together when I was on the Oakland City Council as well, and he's terrific about informing me about the stand-down events.

I was wondering if there's um a more systematic way for um the board to be informed about various events we can add to our newsletter or share in our social media.

Is there sort of a distribution list or listserv about all the events that we could receive and share with our constituents?

Well, certainly we'd be in contact with you to anything that you can help us get out the word.

This last time we actually went to the the clinic uh and hand out flyers.

Uh we went to different uh food banks, we went to the churches, we've gone to the schools, colleges, handing out flyers, sent emails, but anything that the county can help.

Now the DAV, uh the Department of Veterans Affairs, they they went, they sent postcards.

I even received a postcard uh because I'm on the list as a veteran in Alameda County uh announcing our stand downs.

If uh if other uh places in the county or other counties make us aware of a stand down, we try to get the word out uh because there are some other stand downs in some of the other counties that we try to make sure that everybody is aware of.

Yeah.

Um Supervisor Fortunately Bass, we also have our county veteran service officer in the audience.

So if you wanted to come to the podium and speak about any of the questions that were asked.

Good afternoon, everyone.

My name is Anthony Simpson, as Ms.

Ford just addressed.

I am the new, I am the new veteran service officer, of course, for the county, and I thank you for the opportunity to give some insight.

Um, however, I'll be giving my presentation next month, and I can perhaps address some of your concerns.

Um this past weekend we do work uh collaboratively with the VAC, and there are some things that we have in mind that we want to move forward.

However, we are working with the uh the VTC, the veterans treatment court in order to have uh provide information to those veterans who are incarcerated.

Um again, we do believe that when we do have our standalone location, I think it's going to increase the traffic flow, so our numbers will be increased.

Um I know you mentioned about how we can work collaboratively with other agencies and save the county itself some money.

Um we have initiated a robust system to work within our social service system to identify those veterans that seeking that particular type of services to verify their veteran status so that any monies that uh that the county had allotted for them, we can direct those funds to those veterans who serve in order to get those federal uh benefit uh with the Department of Veteran Affairs.

As Mr.

Owens has mentioned, um we do uh I have worked directly with the VA regional office in Oakland as well as the VHA out of Palacio.

So we're hidden it from the benefit side of the house as well as the medical side of house with the sole purpose of assisting our veterans, their family, and their dependents.

Does that address your concern, Ms.

Ford?

Yes, thank you.

Thank you.

And we'll make sure if there's any flyers that we share those with board members to include in your newsletters.

Thank you.

Um Chair Tam, I just got uh a message from uh Omar Farmer, who is one of our commissioners.

His hands are raised.

Oh, great, great, great.

Thank you.

Um did you somar is online and would also like to address the board or or the committee.

Omar, go ahead.

Thank you very much uh for the opportunity to address this committee.

Uh and thank you for um allowing us to do this presentation.

Uh the last time we've been able to provide a presentation was back in 2023, and a lot has happened uh since then and now.

But just to um address uh your point, uh, Supervisor Bass about a more systematic way of being informed of just the stand downs, for example, uh that's a really uh important question to ask.

So moving forward, like we did uh this year, um, we're more than we're more than likely going to have stand downs during PTSD Awareness Month, which is June, and then National Suicide Prevention and Awareness Month, which is in September, since uh the suicide issue among veterans is an issue of paramount importance, and PTSD within uh the veteran community and homeless community uh is also an issue, um uh a top issue among those groups.

So uh as well as formally incarcerated veterans.

Um so that's that's why we hold the events during those months.

So if that helps.

That's all I have.

Thank you very much.

Um I appreciate your presentation.

I also am mindful of the recommendations that you're putting forth, and I do notice that there's uh there's a significant increase based on the stats between the first quarter and the second quarter in terms of uh the number of outreach and the contacts and the award, basically the total awards almost doubled.

But I I was um informed and maybe the the progress has been different.

I was told that the um the old or the former assessment center in Hayward would likely be a new site for the BSO uh center.

And that information is correct.

And we were hoping to move in the first quarter of this year um due to some technicalities, having needing to have a new server installed, um, having our information technology department do some follow-up work.

It's been delayed, but the new server was installed um last week.

And ITD hopes to finish their work by mid-October, and then we'll make sure all the technology is in place and hopefully can move in by the end of this year at the latest.

Thank you.

So sounds like one of the key recommendations uh with a very uh service-centric center will be located in Hayward, and um some of these other satellite uh offices.

I know there's been discussions uh with uh with several different community groups about the old Castle Valley Library potentially being used as a community center and a veterans center.

Um do you expect that these satellite offices could provide um the full range of services because clearly there's overlaps in a lot of the benefits uh with basically navigation centers because uh you know the federal government may provide VA benefits with health care and um some mental health care, but certainly not when it comes to um like food security and housing.

Um how how do we um make sure that there's appropriate um staffing at services for these areas?

Well, I'll have to address that to the VSO.

We we push for it.

I mean, I know that the staffing is going to be an issue for them and then acquiring the sites, but uh thus the questions we ask every uh meeting is uh where are the VSO, are they moving out of ESPOT Mall or is there gonna still be a satellite office and VS at the East Mot Mall when they move over to High?

So we'll be a standalone office, all of the veterans um staff will move from East Mont to Foothill Boulevard and Hayward.

Um I think some other options that uh the department is considering would be um kiosks, virtual kiosks.

I don't know if we have any adult aging services staff who want to come up and maybe speak to that faith or Jennifer.

Good afternoon.

I'm Jennifer Stevens Pierre.

I'm the program manager for the county veteran service office.

And so we're looking at multiple ways to be able to provide the services in our satellite.

So we do have a satellite right now that we um attend every Tuesday in the City of Fremont at the Fremont Resource Center.

Um we are currently working on what we call a virtual desk.

So where we will be able to, a veteran could possibly go online, sit in a queue, and then participate that way, or to receive benefits or services that way.

Um we are concerned about the you know, opening up other satellite offices because due to staffing, um, and so that's one of the things that we'll continue to raise um if there is an effort to open up like standalone um standalone uh satellite offices.

Um and I wanted to also address another item that you had when you talked about nutrition for veterans and you know that there are um instances of food insecurities.

And that and the thought is is that most time the benefit that they were received from veterans or from the VA is larger than the benefit they receive from like um Cal Fresh, or and so that will increase their social economic status, and therefore could inherently solve the issue of food insecurities as well.

Okay, that's helpful to know.

Uh but in terms of addressing uh Supervisor Fort Renato Bass's earlier question, a lot of these navigation services were an item on our agenda.

We're um seeing potential cuts, significant cuts from the federal government.

Is the veterans benefits insulated from some of those cuts?

You know, based on some of the legislation that I've seen, they're not insulated.

Um, that they are um just based on legislation that I've seen that there's potentials for cuts there.

Now it remember that the the veteran benefit, if they receive a claim and they're approved for their claim, that's an entitlement.

So, you know, they serve, they got a disability as a result of that service.

Where we are concerned, those cuts happen are in health care or what we call auxiliary services like mental health, those type of things.

Okay.

I I see that one of the challenges is um like having a robust website that's more interactive, but I like your your thought process of uh maybe having a service desk, you know, uh sort of like telecare with a with a physician so that um especially a disabled veteran, they don't have to drive into a certain location that they can probably get some sort of counseling and interaction uh online.

That's not our goal.

Is that facilitated with the website?

Or is that something that needs to be upgraded?

So the goal is to model several counties that currently have it.

One of them is Contra Costa County, where we will have a link on the website where if you access that link, you will it would be very similar to you visiting the lobby except for you or you're joining us or you're requesting assistance online.

So you will go into a queue and then you will speak with a veteran service representative or the veteran service officer, depending on you know, just on a flow basis.

So first come first serve type deal.

So yes.

Okay, that's helpful to know.

And sounds like Mr.

Owens, um, you ask and you shall receive a new veterans office.

Yeah, and just one more thing.

We are working on re-establishing the newsletter for the veteran service office, so we'll be able to share information in that way as well.

Excellent.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

That's all the questions I had.

Are there any public comments on this item?

There are no speakers.

Okay.

Let's move to the next informational item, which is the Department of Child Care Support Services update from Miss Phyllis Nance.

Yeah, she's just full of smiles today.

Um, so that everyone knows today is her last Social Services Committee meeting of her career here in Alameda County.

Congratulations.

I know.

We're gonna miss you.

Yeah, I'm gonna miss everyone also.

We're still trying to get you out of Pleasanton, though.

We're working on it though.

Um good afternoon, Supervisor Tan and Supervisor Fernando Bass.

Um, Phyllis Nance, the your director of child support services.

Along with me today is Bangeria Harvey, our supervising attorney who will present an update on our implementation for new legislation.

This is our semi-annual update.

So we'll give you some general information about what's been happening since the last update.

Um we always start with our vision because we think that it really matters for the community and everyone to know that at Child Support Services, we believe we see all parents are fully engaged in the supporting of their children and the well-being of the children.

Um I think that vision grounds us and keeps us, keeps children in the center of the work that we do.

Next slide, please.

Um our mission reflects both of our compassion and the accountability that we think is important in the child support services.

We encourage responsible parenting, family self-sufficiency, child well-being by locating parents, establishing paternity, establishing child support, modifying and enforcing that, uh, modifying the child support orders when necessary, and enforcing and collecting child support.

Um each one of those functions, they sound really legalistic, but behind each one of those functions is our commitment to stability for children and families.

We have operational principles that we believe are core to how we do our work, not the work that we do, but how we go about doing it.

Um, it's principle is about being family focused and family-centered.

Partnering with families to eliminate the barriers to providing reliable support is really really important.

We've been working on this for the last 10 years to really start to make a difference and change the concept of child support services.

A dynamic workforce.

Well, in order to really be family focused, you really have to have highly skilled and engaged employees.

Um, and I believe that we've done a fabulous job in building the capacity of our staff.

Um, collaboration, we can't do the work alone.

And we work in a way in which we are partnering with so many different agencies so that we can help to mitigate a lot of the barriers that families may have.

Um we are striving to provide the highest level of service.

This is complicated work.

Lots of times there are a lot of emotions that are involved in this work, and there is a major legal aspect to this work, and so providing the highest level of service is what we thrive to do.

And then innovation.

Innovation for us is really important.

How we deliver services, as the previous veterans conversation, delivering service virtually, finding different places other than Pleasington for services to be delivered.

Um, we are working hard to make sure that our services are accessible to families.

Who do we serve?

We serve 25,000, over 25,000 children and families.

And I love this slide because behind every one of those numbers is a child.

Somebody that we are hoping to make a difference for.

And so we keep that in mind when we are doing our service delivery.

As of August, um, September is the end of our federal fiscal year, so we don't have the final uh numbers, but as of August, we had collected 71,728, 71 million.

What am I saying?

71,000.

71 million, over 71 million dollars in child support, and over 90 percent of that, six over 65 million went directly to the families.

We're proud of that.

We know that that level of child support collection really makes a difference.

We see ourselves as the safety net for families, and when we can get that money out the door, it makes a difference for the families we serve.

In terms of our performance, we don't have our final performance measurements because that ends at the end of this month, but right now we have five federal performance measurements.

We're at 98.2% in a paternity establishment or parentage establishment.

92% in order establishment, meaning that of the cases we have in our caseload, 92% of those have orders.

We are at 61.4% in current support collections, meaning every month that there's a current support that's due, we are collecting 60 over 61% of that.

And we have 64% in arrears collections, meaning we are, if there is past due child support, we are collecting on those past due child support arrears.

When we look at our caseload, I think it also tells a story.

And I think it's the story that is important for the community to understand.

We've seen a drop in our caseload over the years.

However, what we also have seen is that the bulk of the cases that we have in our caseload are families that previously received CalWorks benefits.

So we know that those families need our services.

We are their safety net, helping them to navigate and not necessarily have to go back on to CalWorks or public assistance.

We know that we have a percentage of our caseload that has never been on public assistance.

And so it's important in how we serve so that with families don't find themselves on public assistance.

And then we have a caseload, which we believe is probably inaccurate at the state level.

There um we've seen a decline in our CalWorks cases, but now we know that at the state level, as they're talking to the State Department of Social Services and the State Department of Child Support Services, that there might just be some little glitch in our systems that are not getting all of the referrals that should get to the child support services.

But in that capacity, we also understand that if we can do a good job as it relates to the establishment and enforcement of child support, then we can also help families move from the CalWorks roles into another level of self-sufficiency.

And then finally, I talked a little bit about that collaboration conversation, but I just want to say that there are so many groups that we work with.

We now have a new working partnership with First Five and their fatherhood, really trying to educate brand new parents before they ever need child support, trying to educate them on why supporting your child is important, and that if you find the need that you are in place where you are co-parenting, we're here for for your to help you navigate through that.

Clearly, social services is a major partner of ours and have lots of opportunities to do a lot more work with social services.

We've been working with probation and the re-entry population.

We're there with core at um all the time, and we really know that that population, there's so many opportunities to assist them, meaning that we had we have debt reduction programs, we have programs where their whole child support can be forgiven in uh and their cases can be closed based on certain circumstances.

So we're working hard to build more and more community partners and reach families where they are.

With that said, I'm going to turn it over to our supervise uh supervising attorney Van Jeria Harvey to talk a little bit about one of the key legislations that will be implemented in January.

It will make a difference.

It's going to have an impact.

And Van Gieria will share how we are trying to affect that implementation.

Good afternoon, supervisors.

Thank you for the opportunity to share.

And that is how we actually establish a child support order.

We currently have the opportunity to use something called presumed income, which basically just assumes that someone can make minimum wage 40 hours a week and we can base their support order on that if we know nothing about them.

The change in the legislation is to add earning capacity to our actual income basis for determining support.

The best, the gold standard in our organization is always actual income.

And so we always are striving for that.

But when we can't find out something, the legislature has replaced presumed income with earning capacity.

We see this as a really valuable opportunity to ensure that the support order is individualized, that we actually are able to understand what are the circumstances of that individual person regarding their job skills, their health, their um the local job market, all of the things that are in place at that moment in time where we're attempting to develop and establish the support order and remove us from just having uh not just Alameda County, but the entire state from just having a blanket default to presumed income.

Allowing us to do this actually underscores the value of our staff and recognizing that they have the skills to actually connect with our uh with the customers with the residents of Alameda County.

Um part of the legislation requires that we make a um more than you know, at least three attempts to reach the uh obligator, the non-custodial parent or the parent paying support, um, as well as the custodial parent.

And we believe by actually being able to really engage with all of with both parties, we will actually see um better orders in the sense that they will be uh reliable, they will be based on the actual circumstances and should lead to greater and more regular payment.

Um part of that is really gathering the um evidence, gathering the information that we'll be using in court.

Um part of one of our partners is court, right?

This the Alameda County Superior Court.

The legislation requires every one of these cases to go before the court for actual judicial hearing.

So we recognize that the level of work of our staff as well as the impact to the court is there to ensure that we reduce um uh we reduce having orders that are not applicable to that actual person, that actually be able to get the person to engage, and they have several opportunities to engage with us as well as with the attending the court hearing.

So we look at this as though it's uh it's titled a challenge, but we also look at this as a real true um opportunity for um all of our customers to be able to connect with us, but to also have the opportunity to have um the court hear their situation and make the orders based on what's actually occurring for them.

Um which brings us to the positive impacts.

Um, those impacts are um having support based on their true ability to pay.

We believe that this will improve our actual performance in terms of compliance with the order, um, actually having timely payments go to households.

Uh we look at the uh connection and engagement with the non-custodial parents or the parents um order to pay support as another opportunity to actually hear and see from them about what's going on in their life and in their circumstances.

And overall, we are always trying to strive and ensure that folks recognize that we are doing this work to get resources into the how homes of children and to for everyone to feel like they are engaged in a fair um and open process that hears where they are, um, but also recognizes that the child is entitled is due the support so that they can um get out of poverty.

Thank you for the opportunity to share.

With that, if you have any questions, I am here.

Thank you for that presentation, both of you.

Supervisor Fortune out of house.

Questions, comments?

Thank you, Chair.

Um Thank you so much, Director Nance, and uh I really appreciated the one-on-one we had when you briefed me on this information and really appreciate the additional information as well.

Certainly wish you the best after your many years of service here.

Um I am curious whether I mean it's it's good to see the impact in terms of serving 25,000 children.

Um what were some what were the numbers like before the pandemic?

I'm just curious if it was higher, lower about the same, seeing that it's dropped off a little bit since then.

Um I'm going to say that we were close to like 28,000 families and children that we were serving before the pandemic.

Um we saw a significant drop after during and after the pandemic.

Initially we were, and part of that conversation was that there was additional resources that were being provided by the federal government.

And I want to say that social services may have seen that same reduced number of applicants for CalWorks, and so that was part of that conversation that we saw in our drop.

Thank you for that.

And similar to the question I asked uh previously to the Veteran Affairs Commission, are you seeing um yet any impact in terms of HR one, the federal budget on families ability to provide health insurance, provide food, or any impact overall in terms of their work?

We haven't seen that yet.

We anticipate that we will see that.

We anticipate that we're going to see that as a result of the refer the referrals.

We we think there's a great possibility we may see increased referrals.

We also do medical support, so we secure insurance from parents, and so we also believe that we may see a reduction in that medical support that you know, as as insurance gets higher for families and for for parents and costs more to add children.

We think that our ability to enforce those insurance that insurance, medical insurance for children may uh have some level of impact.

Thank you.

That's important to be mindful of.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I mean, the data shows your office is doing a great job.

You know, we're looking at 71 million dollars in collections, a reduction in your caseload, hopefully you'll go out of business, right?

But that's not gonna happen.

Um in terms of the um the caseloads, uh the number of re-entry um population that's in your additional, like for example uh your caseload, you divide it up into those are currently aided versus formerly aided and uh newly aided.

Do you see because I I see kind of like a a steady increase, a decrease, but then when I looked at um the proportion, I was trying to understand what proportion of the ones that you are getting that are newly aided that are from the re-entry community.

So I would have to look at that data.

I don't know that I have that level of data.

Um, but I can I we we can definitely get that information.

We do track because incarceration is also one of the factors that is used that will be used in um earnings capacity if there's an incarceration history.

And it is also a factor that's used in um the determination of um whether a debt is collectible or uncollectible.

And so we do have that information.

We just haven't mirrored it together in terms of new cases and that in incarceration, but I'll get that for you.

Okay.

The the part of the reason I'm asking is it's a more convoluted because there's going to be an employment requirement when it comes to Medicaid and CalFresh starting next year.

And what we try to do, obviously, with the re-entry communities also connect them with workforce development and training, whether it's CalWorks.

And so you know, that obviously dovetails with um with this effort.

So if they get through you know, the the re-entry programs that we help fund through the various community-based organizations, if there's some access to that would be uh helpful to know uh how they can be then supportive of their families.

Yeah, that um I think that trying to understand and get that message, it'd be that's the other work that probably needs to get done because lots of times when you are on public assistance and you are the parent that's going to be ordered to pay support, that public assistance is taken into consideration.

And so your child support order may be, depending on what type of public assistance you're getting, your child support order is probably minimal.

So with the requirement to work, it might change the conversation.

So we really need to work together to figure out how to communicate that and how to work with parents in a way that um that they're not doubly impacted.

Thank you.

And on your last presentation on the legislation, what's the number of um I guess individuals or cases where we we have to deal with the you know basically the assumed personal income versus the actual earning capacity?

So currently that's about 20% of our caseload.

Um we are striving to reduce that number because uh those cases, if they went automatically from presumed earning capacity would be impacting our court calendars.

And so, but um we are striving to uh reach our gold standard, which is actual income, actual circumstances that are going on for each of the parties.

So you're your your goal standard is to get to the actual rather than getting a percentage of it, right?

That's right.

Okay.

Yes.

Appreciate that.

That's all the questions I have.

Are there any other public comments on this presentation and update from the child support services department?

There are no speakers.

Okay.

Thank you both very much.

Thank you.

Thank you.

And the next item is the informational item from social service on rebranding.

Yeah.

Almost county health rebranded.

You need to rebrand too.

That's what I heard.

Uh uh I listened and um I responded.

So um I'm gonna switch videos just a little bit, talk about Alameda County Social Services rebranding efforts that have been underway since late last year, and we are nearing the finish, the final stretch.

I want to introduce Pamela Powell, our executive program coordinator who helped to lead this effort for the agency.

It was um a Herculean effort, not just by Pamela, Pamela, but the entire agency and workforce.

So, Pamela, if you can come to the podium and introduce the purple group who I think we'll be presenting remotely.

Again, yeah, we're our new brand.

Our new brand identity.

And so I will introduce Laritza Lopez, who's the chief strategy and creative officer for the purple group, and also Hannah Adams, who's the account director, and they will be leading the presentation today.

Wonderful.

Thank you, Pamela.

Is my audio coming through okay?

Yes.

Awesome, wonderful.

Um, and just checking, there's no video capabilities, correct?

Otherwise, I can put my face on for everybody.

But if not, that's all right.

Um, you can turn on your camera if you wish.

Okay.

Um, I do have it on.

I don't have the ability within the uh the Zoom to activate that.

Um, so I may need to be given permissions.

Um, if so, I'll I'll just start.

And if that is something that can be given, I'm happy to pop on camera and we'll be ready for that as well.

All right.

So as um, as was mentioned, this has been a long effort to do the rebranding and a very fun one.

Um, but I wanted to give a little bit of level set of of why we're here and how we got here.

So if we could go to the next slide, we have a bit of a background that outlines the opportunity that the agency saw to develop a new brand identity and strategy that brings together all the departments under a very cohesive people-centered umbrella.

So this brand is intended to strengthen not only internal unity, but also um that consistent communication inside the agency and with the communities that the agency serves.

So we were partnered in late 2024 and officially started development on the brand new brand identity in 2025 this year.

So we're at about you know, this nine, 10 month mark of work and really excited to share what we have.

On the next slide, we have a bit of who we are.

So you're not confused to who's speaking to you today.

We are an independent marketing agency that was um, you know, built with deep consulting roots over 20 years ago in Chicago, Illinois.

So we are a full service agency.

So not only do we do strategy and rebranding like you'll see today, we also have creative development, media, public relations capabilities.

And we have a deep passion for human services and love working with partners who are also trying to make the world just a tiny bit better for its people as we you know pride ourselves on doing marketing for a better world.

On the next slide, we'll talk a little bit about our process because I want to ground us in how we got here since it has been a journey.

We have this project broken into three phases.

The first being discovery, which is our method of research.

So we're building a very informed foundation, meeting with stakeholders internally and externally to ground us in how we need to find opportunities and what those opportunities are, which will inform the brand strategy and identity.

So the second phase is that development.

It's taking everything we've learned from discovery and finding ways to infuse that and craft the new brand identity with those learnings.

And our third phase is implementation of rollout, which is where we have, you know, we have this full alignment of the new brand identity and we start to develop the style guides, the organizational assets, have trainings on the brand identity, and really start to see it come to life.

On the next slide, we'll get a little bit deeper into what each of these phases meant for us.

So starting back in January, we began this very collaborative research approach, discovery, as I mentioned earlier, to uncover those areas of opportunity.

We knew that it was going to be imperative that we heard from all voices, whether that be inside inside the agency, outside the agency, et cetera.

So we were very grateful that we were able to conduct a wide range of focus groups with all departments of all levels.

So we talked to staff, we talked to leadership, we talked to executive teams, director for it, of course, we talked to CBOs in the community, and also did our own marketing audit of other area agencies, which is where we look to see how they are showing up to the community and start to identify spaces and places where the ACSSA can really own and stand out and differentiate themselves.

So all of that can combines and funnels into phase two, as I mentioned, which is what you'll see the components of what you'll see today.

So phase two of strategy and branding started in April, where we took all those learnings and developed what the new brand identity will look like.

And we'll share with you today the new proposed agency mission, vision, core values, brand story, and tagline.

And then our third and final phase, as I mentioned, is implementation and rollout.

And this one has kind of a long runway.

So this is not an immediate change.

Our target go live dates with this the new brand identity is late November, early December.

And so we will have the ability to train staff and have sessions and explain how the brand will work and be utilized in the day-to-day operations of the agency.

This is also where we develop all of kind of those style guides for how to use the brand and the new colors and the new mission and vision and all of those assets that you need from memos, letterhead, all of those organizations and presentation templates, et cetera.

So really excited to start today and then know that this is a continual rollout.

So last thing I will highlight before we get into the reveal of the rebrand is grounding us in some of those main discovery opportunities that we found.

So on the next slide, we have it broken out in kind of brand story side here on the left and brand visual side on the right.

So from a narrative side, we noticed that a lot of brands are speaking to what they do, you know, what they provide.

But the ACSSA can speak more powerfully to what people can become with support.

So we wanted everything under that human-centered framing.

We wanted to make sure that the brand stayed relational and functional.

So instead of focusing just on, you know, the service or what is provided, we're building distinction by emphasizing how the agency is showing up, what's your purpose and how you're showing up for people across all of life stages.

And then we also saw an opportunity to modernize the government tone.

So keeping credibility very important, of course.

Um, but there is some room to adopt a more human values-led and approachable voice.

And from a brand visual perspective, we wanted to explore the opportunity to integrate some more warmer colors, some warmer accent colors into the brand visual to reflect compassion, care, and connection.

We also wanted to make sure that we were keeping a balance of trust and humanity.

So we have colors that you know reflect credibility and also colors that reflect warmth and human centered human-centeredness.

So we want to visually express that we are steady and we're also supportive.

We are strong, but we are compassionate.

And we wanted to modernize the look without losing authority.

So as we go through, you'll see that we have some modern clean combinations in the brain identity that feel grounded and stable, but not cold or institutional.

So all of those kind of combine as we start to look through, you know, how do we need to adapt and evolve and you know change this new brand identity?

So I am going to turn it over to Larissa to walk us through what this is starting to culminate and look like for you all.

Hello, I'm doing an audio check.

Can you hear me?

Yes.

Yes, I can.

Awesome.

Thank you.

Great.

Thank you, Hannah.

As Hannah mentioned, there was quite a process of discovery and research and voices that were integrated in order to define the new brand for the ACSSA.

As we go to the next slide, you'll see the culmination of all the things that Hannah has shared.

There's actually quite a lot of elements here.

We talked about human centered.

So we wanted to give that impression of a human being at the center of what you'll see is the icon on the left hand side of the total logo.

But it also speaks to, you know, in first sort of a tree, which really speaks to growth, expansion, opportunity, but it's also stability.

So it's a way to keep it human centered, yet the circle could be an embrace or the sun, or if you can notice it has this upward movement movement.

The brand is intended to reflect many of the nuances we heard from individuals during the discussions that we had during the discovery.

Everyone talked about being a safety net, but they also talked about that element of that's not just what we are.

That is, we're leaning to that.

We're very proud of that, is what we heard.

But they also wanted to talk about the other things.

Um, and that we encapsulated with the idea of a way forward.

So if we move on to the next slide, I can speak more directly to what the from all the findings, what this new brand leans into.

It really embraces in totality and leans into safety net, but also surrounded by growth and forward movement and having a certain energy represented, both in the logo, but in the way that things are looking and in the new words and language that we're looking to integrate.

This new identity builds into the ACSSA current strengths and public trust, but really we aim to encourage the agency to be seen as more of that safety net because that's what people repeatedly told us.

We are a safety net, but we do more than just catch people in crisis.

We really want to support their potential.

It's that future thinking, is that forward movement is the ability to move forward with dignity that everyone really lean into.

So we wanted the brand to do both, to reflect the desire to be recognized for what the agency provides and the incredible services that help people along the way and honor the humanity of the people that it serves while giving staff a unifying uh center that really speaks to a shared people first vision of impact.

So all of those elements is what we're making into the new brand.

If we look at the next slide, we wanted to also give real uh this is will be part of the training, but we wanted to give meaning, a common ground meaning for everyone across the agency.

So a safety net, a way forward at the tagline is more than a phrase.

It's the agency's commitment.

It's the fact that the main element is that when that the agency, the ACSSA is here for people when life gets hard and when they're ready for what's next.

It's that way forward movement.

And here you'll see on the two buckets how we define it.

A safety net is about delivering critical support in hard moments and helping people to move forward.

A way forward is about creating along with the people that you serve the conditions for stability and belonging so that people can shape their own future.

It speaks to that collaboration of being there when individuals need the services, but also recognizing everybody has agency and there's dignity behind all the services that are being provided both ways so that people are enabled to uh shape their own futures.

Part of that, if we look at the next slide, and if we can go to the other slide, is now branding is more than a log and an icon.

It's also about what does that mean and what are the how do the words resonate and how do the words guide the people within the company in how they behave and how they uh relate to people that they serve on a day-to-day basis?

What you see on the screen is your current vision and your current vision.

The mission speaks to promoting economic and social well-being, and the current vision speaks to the partnerships, the organizations to better equip those that serve to overcome challenges under a path to self-sufficiency and family stability and being successful and healthy and neighborhoods, helping neighborhood rise.

We want to, we wanted to use the create a new mission and vision, using that as the foundation.

If we go to the next slide, we'll present how we tweak the vision and mission.

We'll start with the mission.

So here what we tweet this that we, so the ownership from the ACSSA side, we provide essential support, helping individuals, families, and communities meet basic needs in times of challenge and move forward with stability, dignity, and purpose.

So you'll see the heavier orientation towards the outcomes, towards not just the services you're providing, speaking to those, but also what you're aiming to achieve and provide in terms of the vision that should we invit uh leads to the ACSA stating that we envision a community where stability is within reach.

Dignity is upheld for all, and opportunities help every person shape their future with confidence and care.

So you'll notice that balance element of agency for the individual you serve, but also the element of the critical services you provide and the focus on the ultimate outcome, which it has been spoken as self-sufficiency, but really speaking to that, even defining that to the idea that stability is within reach and dignity is upheld for all, and opportunities help each person shape their future.

In as we looked at that, and we go to the next slide, thank you.

We also suggest uh have new core values to align with the uh new mission and vision and the new brand.

If we can go to the next slide, please.

These core values have been updated to reflect the key themes that emerged during the discovery.

Dignity was very strong with among everyone that we spoke to, both internal as well as external uh community-based organizations, and this idea of a sense of belonging.

So we wanted to shift the values to focus from transactional service.

Previously, one of the values was customer service, which is great and definitely not forgotten, but kind of shifted to an empathy-driven people first support, so that it aligns more with this human-centered approach within the brand.

So we speak to dignity, compassion because compassion is about leading with empathy, dignity is about treating everyone with respect and humanity to integrity in behaving and acting in honesty to transparency and follow-through so that people see in every interaction that you are treating them with integrity and then to that it's the shared purpose.

This speaks to working together with community, with each other and with those that are served by the ACSSA, because here the shaping element is the fact that progress is collaborative.

A collective is needed, a collective effort is really the catalyst also for innovation, which is part of the staff talked about in the future, having more opportunities for innovation through systems and many other ways.

And then, of course, there's the element of accountability, which is about taking ownership, where the actions and outcomes support those that you serve, but it'll hold the shared purpose.

So those are the new core values that are human-centered, empathy-driven, people-centric or people first support.

If we move to the next slide, please, and the next one as well.

We want to talk to you a little bit about what all this sort of means in a collective and how is that communicated.

And it's in something we call the brand story.

Um, a brand story is audience-facing narratives.

So this would be on your website.

It would be used to inform and guide all the communications that are created once all the brand training is uh deployed.

It is designed to be foundational and is really grounded in those core values that I just shared with you.

That's what a brand is.

The brand lives its core values.

It's an intentional story that highlights what the agency stands for, explains its core purpose at the heart of the brand, and in a way that authentically resonates with the communities that you serve and the people within the organization can embrace and feel that they can, you know, um buy into it and back that up all the way.

The way that that is expressed, I will share with you in the next slide, please.

So we see the Alameda uh County Social Services Agency story as follows.

At Alameda County Social Services Agency, we believe dignity, stability, and care should be within the reach for everyone at every stage of life.

Life is unpredictable.

A job can be lost, a health issue can upend everything.

Families face unexpected hurdles.

Aging brings new complexities.

In these moments, support isn't just helpful, it's essential.

We serve as a safety net when people need it and a way forward towards stability.

Whether someone is putting food on the table, navigating a crisis, accessing vital services, or planning their next step.

We show up with compassion, respect, and steady partnership across our services, from child safety to employment support, from caring from older adults to supporting veterans and people living with disabilities.

We create pathways to greater stability, connection, and opportunity.

To us, being a safety net and a way forward means standing with people in life's hardest moments and helping them move forward with purpose.

So these are all the core essential truths or core elements of the new uh brand and the story behind who Alameda County Social Services Agency is and how we will continue to move forward serving people and serving its communities.

We'll pause here if there's any questions or reactions.

And here's our contact information.

Did you want to close out?

Thank you.

Thank you very much for that presentation.

Um, turn it over to Supervisor Hardon Abbas.

Any questions or comments?

I'll just say briefly that it all really resonates.

Um, I appreciate you appreciate you sharing the process that you went through, and I think reorienting around the human connection and the values of dignity, stability, purpose, or care.

Um, it's all really the core work that uh your agency does, Director Ford.

So it all really resonates.

Um the brand story, I thought was very um compelling and easy to digest.

And I love how people-centered everything is.

I guess going forward, um, how will this um also be integrated with each of the departments within the agency, of which there are quite a few.

You know, what does it look like to really live in, you know, sort of own it and live into it and share it out publicly.

So, did the purple group want to take that question?

Or you can start and I'll fill in if needed.

Great.

That's a great thing uh uh question and thank you for it.

And Hannah, please feel free to chime in.

The way that we've extended this, this is actually integration within the departments.

As you see, it really encompasses and embraces all the amazing services that are provided.

So within each department, we even work with them to determine mission themes that align with the overall brand.

And we work with them to refine their specific mission statements, again, to align with all the elements of the brand.

We did this with all the departments from the agency administration and um finance to adult and aging services to children and family services to workforce and benefits administration, and then we actually provide information that shows how the brand comes to life in their specific departments, and also how to bring a safety net and a way forward to life in their specific departments, while creating those layers so that you still have that powerful brand consistency of the messages you want to express externally as well as internally.

And from a tactical side, we are going to be creating guidelines, if you will, for each department.

So we have the agency level branding that we've taken you through.

And then as Loretta mentioned, there are different articulations for how that may show up in an operational sense for each department.

And so everyone will have kind of their own cheat sheet, if you will, of what all that means and what do these elements really mean when you start to put it in practice for your specific department.

So that was that was a very fun part of the this project for me is seeing how everything can trickle down and be interpreted and utilized, knowing that we have very distinct work streams and departments, but all under this umbrella that we've created.

Just really quickly, I didn't comment on the visual brand.

The visual brand is really it's uh really dynamic and um beautiful, actually.

So congratulations on all of this work.

Thank you.

I don't think we've had a new um logo for over 20 years.

So it's pretty exciting to undertake this effort.

Thank you.

Um I appreciate the presentation and the process that you describe.

I I was just wondering uh during the discovery part of the process.

Was there something that you've been hearing that we needed to focus on have improvements in terms of the image of social service or the branding that we're trying to create?

Um, we did.

Um, a lot of what we heard was from internally, the information was around this idea of the stigma, maybe some of the outside world may have when it came to the idea of social services or warefare programs, and hence the whole strength around they really we heard very strongly from staff at all levels and leadership that we embrace a safety net.

It is what we do, but there are these other layers, and the idea in the people-centric element of introducing those aspects of the brand is actually to start that process of really speaking to this core.

We call it sort of a core truth, and that core truth is life happens, right?

Life is unpredictable.

So the idea here was to start that thinking around anyone can need these services at any point of their life.

And part of doing that over a period of time will work towards shaping that, you know, it's not welfare, it's not giving people the free, it's just being there because it's essential, depending on what happened in your life, that you may need these services.

That was the one consistency of the idea behind the potential stigma that the world or generally may have around the services being provided.

So we wanted to anchor the brand and the story around the essentialness of the services and that they're really for anyone who needs them, depending on what's happening in their lives.

I hope that answers your question.

It does.

I mean, it also lends to why you um you're underscoring the dignity, stability, and the care aspect to remove that stigma because when um when I hear uh Supervisor Chan in the past talk about social service and the community's work, they I mean our core mission was to eradicate poverty in the county.

Uh, but obviously we we do a lot more when it comes to providing services for specific groups, whether it's seniors, whether it's children and families, whether it's the veterans.

And I think um this rebranding effort brings in that cohesion of all the various services and and hopefully um by having a more outward-facing um presence, we we can help remove some of that stigma because as you said, uh life happens, different stages of life has different needs, and uh we're here to provide those services for everyone.

So thank you for your presentation.

Do we welcome?

I'm sorry, comments.

Do we have any uh public comments or questions on this item?

There are no public speakers.

Thank you.

Rebrand.

Okay, thank you.

The next item is the state and federal policy changes, so the safety net, preliminary impacts of HR one as well as the state budget proposals.

Um staff to come forward so we can try to make up some time here.

We'll have Hanna Hamilton, Roland Shell, our program specialist, and Juan Ventania, our Medicaid program specialist.

Um, so each one of them will have a part of the presentation based on your subject matter expertise.

And we will start with Hannah.

Hear me?

There we go.

Um, my name is Hannah Hamilton.

I'm the policy director for social services agency.

I'll mostly be presenting high-level these provisions that are coming down and their impacts.

And then Roland Shao and Juan Ventania, they're our program specialists for CalFresh and Medi-Cal, and they'll be going into the details about each of the provisions.

Today's presentation outlines the preliminary impacts of recent federal and state policy changes to the safety net, particularly focused on CalFresh and Medi-Cal and how these changes will affect Alameda County residents and service delivery.

We don't know a lot about how these changes will be implemented.

And this presentation reflects our best estimates based on currently available information.

Okay, so we'll begin the presentation with a background on HR1, the big beautiful bill act, and then we'll walk through key changes to CalFresh or to SNAP, which is known as CalFresh in California, and Medicaid, which is known as Medic Medical in California, their local impacts, implementation timelines, and then how the state and county are preparing to respond.

So HR1 was signed into law on July 4th, 2025, and much about the law as you know remains uncertain, as I mentioned.

Several important provisions take effect upon enactment.

However, the states have been granted a 120-day hold harmless period while we wait for further guidance from the USDA's food and nutrition services, which we refer to as FNS.

In the meantime, the Department of Social Services, CDSS has directed counties not to implement any of the provisions of the act until that federal guidance is has been issued.

That said, we do know that the law significantly shifts cost burdens from the federal government to states and counties, and we're preparing for major operational and fiscal impacts.

So this slide outlines six major changes to CalFresh under HR1.

Each one of these provisions has significant implications for residents and our agency operations, which we'll get into in the subsequent slides.

So the first one restricts imposes restrictions on updates to the Thrifty Food Plan.

The Thrifty Food Plan is a method for determining CalFresh Medi-Cal benefits, and it will go into effect October 1st, 2025.

So next month.

This is going to freeze the benefit amounts of our CalFresh allocations until at least two years from now, October 1st, 2027, and any future updates after that must be cost neutral.

The next provision will the elimination of eligibility for certain immigrants, and it's also effective upon enactment, and we're waiting for FNS guidance to implement this as well.

So refugees, asyles, parolees, service survivors of trafficking, and others not explicitly listed in the new eligibility criteria, will lose access to Calfresh.

Some of these folks may qualify for the California Food Assistance Program, but implementation delays and eligibility gaps are expected.

And Alameda County will lose.

This is just the public health department will lose 1.6 million in funding for that.

And then another major provision.

So these last three are the ones that we're particularly concerned with.

The first is SNAP's work requirements for CalFresh.

It's also effective upon enactment, but we have a waiver that could be removed at any day until January 2026.

And so those pending subject to work requirements now include adult ages 55 to 64, parents with children 14 and above, veterans, veterans, people experiencing homelessness will now be subjected to these work requirements and former foster youth.

Okay.

And so the last two, when these really speak to the funding of Calfresh.

Um historically, the uh states and counties have paid for a portion of the administrative cost of the program, and it's been 50-50.

That ratio is going to change now with states and counties covering uh 75% and the federal government covering 25%.

Um then when it comes to the benefits funding piece, the federal government has always covered 100% of CalFresh benefits to clients.

Um and now what HR does one does is that ties the benefit cost to payment error rates.

So starting October 1st, 2027, states with uh payment error rates above 6% must cover a range of um benefit costs between 5 and 15 percent.

Um this is really gonna impact California.

Uh it could potentially impact California.

Um, in the last fiscal year, 2024, our payment error rate was uh 10.98%.

Um, and that would result in a 15% uh benefit cost share.

Uh and we would owe the state would owe nearly $2 billion.

Uh and it's unclear whether the state will pass that along to counties or not.

And I will go ahead and uh pass the mic to Roland.

Uh good afternoon, Vice President Tams, Supervisor Fortunato Bass.

Uh so we'll just kind of dive into the first change regarding the thrifty food plan.

Uh just a little bit of quick background on the Thrifty Food Plan.

The Thrifty Food Plan is one of four uh food plans developed by USDA.

It's to um basically use to determine the low cost uh nutritious diet for a family of four.

And then through the Thrifty Food Plan, it is the lowest uh priced plan of the four that USDA develops.

Um cow fresh benefits, the maximum allotment is based on the Thrifty Food Plan, and then it is just um the benefits are recalculated based on household size.

Um this new bill, HR1 that was passed, it will limit when we can next evaluate the Thrifty Food Plan, which pushes it back to October 1st of 2027.

Um what this does is it will limit the um the amount that we can increase cow fresh benefits by, uh limiting it specifically to cost of inflation, but it won't take into effect the cost of new dietary guideline changes proposed by the USDA, changes in food purchasing and preparation uh methods and preferences in families.

Um those will be uh a detriment to um CalFresh recipients for time to come.

Uh additionally, the CalFresh benefits will also be capped at households of 18 or more.

Um fortunately in Alameda County, we don't have um, I don't know of any um households that are that size, but um I'm sure there are individuals that will be impacted by this.

Um, for households greater than um household size of eight, so nine to eighteen, their benefit allotment issuance, they will receive an additional 22% per member, which will be a little bit less than what the uh benefit amounts would increase from a household of seven to a household of eight.

So once you get to household of nine or more, the uh adjustment doesn't really reflect the cost of what it really would cost to feed that household size.

Uh and so, like as I mentioned, um, this mainly change will limit how much CalFresh benefits increases each federal fiscal year.

And over time, we will see um households with uh lower and lower food purchasing power.

Uh next slide, please.

Uh another topic that we'll talk about uh is regarding CalFresh work requirements and ABODs or able-bodied adults without dependents.

Um so just a quick background.

Um, the current definition of an ABOD is an individual between the ages of 18 to 64.

Um they are um physically and mentally able to work, and they do not have a dependent under the age of 14 in their household.

Uh so if an individual is an ABOD, they do need to meet the work requirement, which is working or participating in work activities for an average of 20 hours per week or 80 hours per month.

Uh, or they can also meet a ABOD exemption.

Otherwise, they these individuals, if they don't meet an exemption, don't meet the work requirement, they will be time limited to three full months of CalFresh benefits within a set uh fixed 36 month clock.

The current 36 month clock began in January 1st of 2023, and it's going to end at the end of this year, December 31st, 2025.

A new 36-month clock will then start January 1st of 2026 and go through December 31st of 2028.

When an individual does meet the work requirements or they're meeting the exemption, they will not be time limited.

So currently our process is to screen all CalFresh individuals when they're applying, renewing, reporting changes to make sure any new household members, any new applications received, that we are screening all of the adults to make sure that they are either meeting the work requirement or meeting exemption and then offering them alternatives to make sure that they don't lose their benefits, which is going to include referrals to our CalFresh and employment training programs.

Additionally, the state of California is under a CalFresh ABOD time limit or work requirement waiver, which suspends that work requirement for all ABOD individuals through January 31st of 2026.

So we no longer qualify for a waiver under the new HR1.

So we are waiting for FNS to provide us with further guidance.

Next slide, please.

This slide here is just going to detail kind of the changes of what ABOD was before HR1 and after.

So on the left-hand column, this was the previous policy, and ABOD was defined as an individual between the ages of 18 to 54.

Currently, with the new definition under HR1, that upper age limit has increased by 10 years, and it's now ending at age 64.

Additionally, the exemption for having a dependent used to be under the age of 18, but now it's currently under the age of 14.

Likewise, we had three separate ABOD exemptions for individuals that were experiencing homelessness that were veteran or they were in foster care through their age 18 and they're under the age of 24 currently.

All three of these exemptions have been eliminated.

There is one new exemption that was created with HR1, and that is for Indians, urban Indians, Californian Indians, and Indians that are eligible for Indian health services.

Next slide, please.

Thank you.

And then quickly just to round up our ABOD discussion.

This here is a timeline of ABOD implementation in Alameda in California.

We haven't really had to implement ABOD until September of 2019.

And when we did implement that, it was for a total of seven months, because then in March of 2020, we had the COVID-19 pandemic, and we were placed on an ABOD time limit waiver that suspended all states from having to implement ABOD.

During that seven-month period, I do want to emphasize that nobody, no ABODs were discontinued because they did not meet the work requirement.

This is because for the months of September 2019 to November 2019, those were the three countable months that an ABOD could use.

And then for that final month of December 2019, the state provided guidance that counties could issue a discretionary exemption is what they call it at the time.

And what that did is that gave individuals a one-month exemption where they did not have to meet the requirement, they could continue receiving CalFresh.

Then beginning January of 2020, that was a new 36-month time clock.

And so all ABOD individuals can get another three months of CalFresh benefits before they would have to either meet the work requirement or meet an exemption.

But again, our ABOD exemptions due to COVID kicked in beginning in April of 2020.

And from that point on through present and currently, at least through January 31 of next year, the state of California is on that ABOD waiver.

But again, we are currently screening, trying to be proactive, catching as many CalFresh applicants to see if they already meet an exemption or they already meet the work requirement.

That makes our future follow-up in the coming weeks and months a little bit easier to tackle as that population hopefully will be a little bit lower.

Next slide, please.

Next, I'll dive into some of the fiscal policy changes.

The first that HANA mentioned earlier was the administrative cost sharing and how she mentioned the current or the previous actually still the current split is a 50-50 split, but beginning federal fiscal year of 2027, which will begin October 1st of next year.

That split will change to 75% state fund and 25% federal.

And then in California, we split that state cost.

70% is covered by the state, and counties cover the remaining 30%.

That split is not going to change.

However, because that uh ratio of federal and state split increase by 25%, uh counties will end up paying, well, both counties and the state will end up paying greater amounts due to that 25% increase split.

Next slide, please.

The other fiscal policy change that HANA mentioned was regarding benefit cost sharing.

So presently throughout the country, um CalFresh benefits, SNAP benefits are entirely 100% federally funded.

This split or penalty cost for our payment error rate does not exist.

So beginning federal fiscal year of 2028, which begins uh in October of 1st of 2027.

Um, states will begin having to potentially pay a portion of CalFresh benefit issuance based on their payment error rates.

Um payment error rate is a is a rate that's conducted through random small quality control sample by the feds by FNS.

Um essentially they're checking to see if we have to if we have determined eligibility and benefit issuance correctly.

If we've issued out benefits accurately, have we issued benefits too much, we call it over issuance, or do we not issue enough considered a under issuance?

Both over issuances and under issuances are a penalty or are errors and they count towards our payment error rate.

Uh and up on the slides here, we have kind of the breakdown percentage wise of what triggers each percentage match.

Currently, um we are in that highest tier at above 10%, so that would be a 15% state match.

Um ever since the pandemic since 2020, our payment error rate has not gone below 10%.

Um prior to that in 2019, we were in that first uh apron of 5%.

We were uh a 5% state match.

Our state average was about 7%, 7.5%.

Um, and so uh we are looking, as HANA mentioned, that at the 15% rate at the current levels of CalFresh issuances in the state of California, that is about a $2 billion a year state match that the state would have to come up with.

Currently, because the state did not anticipate there would ever be a split between benefits being partially issued by the state.

Um, there is no plans, there's nothing written up where the state bypasses some of this cost to counties.

Uh next slide, please.

And this chart here kind of shows uh the various colors here show the different um error rates.

That blue is the national error rate, which you'll notice is also above 10%.

Uh the red is the county error rate.

Uh, and again, this varies quite a bit.

And then we have the overall state error rate in the gold, and this is the one that will determine the amount of benefit cost share.

I do point, I do want to point out that there is no federal fiscal year 2020 or 2021 QC, mainly because of the COVID pandemic, and so we did not have QC measurements during those years.

Um, a couple of factors that likely will have attributed to our high error rate is just the huge increase in CalFresh participation due to the onset of the pandemic.

Um I do have some figures here back in 2019 in Alameda County.

We were looking at a caseload of just under 70,000, which is about 120,000 individuals.

And then at five years later, if we look at the most recent federal fiscal year 2024, we have uh over 11,000 cases, uh about 176,000 CalFresh individuals that were um that were aiding here.

So that's a huge increase and that puts a big burden on our work staff.

So we are definitely working to make sure that we're processing cases correctly, but it's also the the hardships of just the random sample.

Again, we have 111,000 cases in 2024.

The federal QC reviewed a total of 39 cases for the year, and that's what our air rate is based off of.

Next slide, please.

Um to help deduct against some of the earnings or income of a household that's applying for CalFresh, which would thereby increase their CalFresh benefit.

One of the ways we can issue out the SUA is by issuing out what we call is a low-income energy home energy assistance program, LIHEAP.

In California, it's actually called SUAS, which is the state utility assistance subsidy.

And this is basically a once-a-year $20 and one cent payment issued out to the households that allows them to claim the SUS benefit.

And by this, by claiming the SUS benefit, the CalFresh household can receive potentially a higher CalFresh benefit issuance.

There was no limitation on who could receive this as long as they weren't already receiving the maximum CalFresh benefit for their household size, and they weren't already receiving the SUA utility deduction.

With HR1, this is now limited to elderly and disabled households.

And then for CalFresh purposes, elderly is defined as individuals 60 or older.

The second impact to the SUA is we had originally planned to increase the SUAS calculation to count the benefit, the basic internet expense benefit.

However, HR1 has removed this.

And with that, I will pass it back to HANA to go over our local impact.

So this the next two slides talk about the impacts of these changes that we've been discussing.

And this slide is all dedicated to ABOD work requirements.

What you see in front of you is data that's based on the prior uh prior HR1 uh data.

And uh so this data, there's a sum of 13,300 individuals that would have been at risk even before HR1, which um expanded the age range and eliminated major exemptions, um, including for homelessness.

So even just the homelessness exemption in and of itself will likely add another 9,000 residents uh to the number of uh folks who will be uh subjected to uh the work requirements.

Um not only will it impact you know our clients, but from an agency perspective, uh the changes will require um uh you know, for us to adapt uh changes to eligibility and administration procedures, which will greatly increase staff time spent on eligibility redetermination and verification.

Um I'll just say too, the state estimates that over 300,000 new individuals will be at risk of losing eligibility, uh, and that could equate to a loss of almost 500 million in federal benefit funding annually.

Uh okay, so the next slide just breaks down the other provisions under HR one that impact Calfresh.

So uh the first one, um, the elimination of eligibility for certain immigrants, uh, this, as I mentioned, will impact refugees, asylum, parolees, survivors of trafficking, and others.

Um we don't have a number of uh immigrants here in Alameda County that this will be uh impacted, that will be impacted by this.

But the state estimates that 73, almost 74,000 lawfully present non-citizens will lose eligibility, um, and that equates to a loss of 133 million in federal funding, uh, federal benefit funding annually.

Um the next uh the standard utility allowance that Roland mentioned.

Again, we don't have uh precise numbers here in the county, but uh at the statewide level, uh it's estimated that 185,000 CalFresh households will see their standard utility allowances reduced, while 15,000 households will lose uh eligibility altogether.

Um for the um for the thrifty food plan, this is something that's gonna impact everyone that's enrolled in CalFresh.

They will all see their benefits frozen for you know those two years and beyond.

Um in May 2025, we had 175,000 individuals enrolled in CalFresh.

Um, and we issued uh 34 million in benefits that month.

Um so as a result of a freeze on those CalFresh benefit levels, um the uh amounts uh of benefits that households have will not keep pace with the rising food costs or updated dietary uh guidelines.

And then regarding the administrative cost sharing provision, um currently Alameda cover Alameda County covers 15% of costs to administer CalFresh.

So a 50% increase means that we can expect to contribute 22.5% of our costs, which would uh which would amount to an $8.8 million increase from 16.1 million uh now that we contribute to 24.9.

Um and this would also contribute to a state share of 685 million in additional cost to California just for that administrative cost sharing.

Uh for the benefits cost sharing, I think um Roland mentioned this and I touched on it earlier.

We only have the statewide uh estimate that um if we're going uh based on our uh payment error rate of 2024 that we would be subjected to uh the 15% uh cost share, which would total to uh nearly two billion um in fiscal year 2028.

And again, it's unclear whether counties will have to contribute to that or not.

Okay, so switching over to Medicaid, also known as Medi-Cal in California.

There are a number of provisions here.

The ones that we'll be focusing on, uh, or Juan will be focusing on are um again work requirements for um Medi-Cal.

This is something that we have never had to implement before, as well as um redeterminations every uh six months.

But there's there's some other provisions here, and I'll just briefly uh kind of go down the list and talk about what these are.

Um so the streamlining eligibility final rule moratorium.

Um this is just a pause that the federal government um has issued on rules that would have simplified medical uh enrollment and renewals.

Um the provider tax and payment restrictions, um, it prohibits new or increased provider taxes.

This is more uh will uh impact um our uh our health uh organizations.

Um and then immigrant coverage restrictions.

Uh so this will limit uh funding to Medicaid or Medical and CHIP to be limited to US citizens, lawful permanent residents, and a few other categories.

So again, the refugees, asylumes, and other groups will lose federal uh federally federally funded coverage here.

Um the work requirements in six months redeterminations, I'll have one cover shortly, and then the mandatory cost cutting for certain adults.

Um it will require certain adults to pay up to $35 per service with some uh exemptions.

Uh it will increase the financial burden on low-income enrollees and may deter the use of necessary services.

And then finally, um, there's the federal database for duplicate enrollment.

This says that in uh 20 by 2029 that states must use a federal database to prevent duplicate enrollment and verify deaths using a master death file.

Uh so from an agency perspective, this will require system changes and increased staff time uh for eligibility verification and data matching.

Um I will pass it on to Juan.

Thank you, Hanna, and good afternoon, Supervisor Tam and Supervisor Fortnot Opus.

Uh first we'll be going over the work requirements, which is Hannah mentioned.

This is the first time that we'll be having them for Medi-Cal.

Um, and as she mentioned, effective January of 2027, uh, the adult expansion enrollees.

So these are the individuals that became newly eligible for full scope Medi-Cal as part of the Affordable Care Act or ACA.

So these are individuals 19 through 64 years old, mostly single individuals, but can include parents and caretaker relatives if they are above that 109% of the federal poverty level if their income is above that level, up to 138% of the federal poverty level.

So these individuals, which we'll call the adult expansion group for the purposes of this presentation, they will be required to engage in a minimum of 80 hours per month of qualifying work activities, obviously primarily employment, but we will be going over some additional ways that they can qualify.

It will start with the ex parte process, which means that our staff will be determining if they meet or are exempt from those ex uh from those work requirements based on the information we have already on files, such as if they applied for other benefits or if they previously had benefits with uh that they applied for with uh Almia County Social Services or through electronic sources, um like you know, income verification um sources that we have online that we're already using to verify income.

So we will be uh attempting to uh verify uh if they meet or are exempt from the work requirements uh initially without uh additional contact.

Um as you can see on the screen, individuals who are non-compliant, they will have 30 days from the uh for they will have 30 days to demonstrate that they are compliant with the work requirements or that they're exempt prior to losing their coverage.

Um I did also want to point out that if they are uh non-compliant, uh they will not be eligible for a covered California subsidy until they meet those work requirements.

Uh so on the next slide, uh as I kind of briefly alluded to earlier, there are a couple of ways that they can meet the uh work requirements, the primary one being employment.

Um we also wanted to mention that um while primarily the work requirement is that they uh meet 80 hours of work per month, uh they are also able to meet the work requirement by uh uh by having an income of up to 80 times the uh or having income of 80 times the federal uh minimum wage, which is $7.25 per hour, or a total of $580 per month.

So it is based on the federal minimum wage and not the state's minimum wage.

Uh they can also meet the work requirements by performing community service if they are uh uh a student halftime or more, or if they're participating in approved work programs, um, as HANA also alluded to earlier.

Um there is still a lot we don't know because we are still waiting for formal guidance on this uh policy change from CMS, the Centers for Medicaid Medicare and Medicaid Services, which is the federal entity uh that manages Medicaid.

Um but this is the high-level information we have right now as far as what would uh allow them to meet the work requirements.

Um, and then also on the next slide, um, we have a matrix which pretty much sums up um the uh work requirements for um the different programs that we have right now.

And I I think the main thing I wanted to highlight with this matrix is that uh what Medi-Cal will be implementing in 2027 will largely mirror what we have for upcoming for CalFresh A-Bods and also for um CalWorks.

Um, primarily that again, the main way to meet the work requirements would be through employment of 80 hours per month, but also for Medi-Cal, there is that added way of meeting the work requirements where if they had uh income of 80 times the federal minimum wage, which is again 580 dollars per month currently, uh, then they would meet the work requirements.

Um, and then as far as the other qualifying activities, they also mostly align with the other programs where you know education and other work programs are the other ways to meet those work requirements.

And it doesn't have to be 80 hours of one specific one, similar to the other programs.

It can be a combination of 80 hours of all these different ways that they um meet the work requirements.

And then on the next slide, we also wanted to highlight some of the um many exemptions as you can see.

There's a lot of ways that the individual could be exempt from the work requirements.

Uh again, the main thing we wanted to highlight here is a lot of these work require uh work requirement exemptions uh are mirrored from uh what for Medi-Cal from what we already have with CalWorks and then also CalFresh.

Uh DHCS has stated in previous meetings with the state that uh so the Department of Healthcare Services, they mentioned uh in previous meetings with them that uh they are trying to, where they can uh mirror the exemptions and the work requirements that are already available specifically for like CalFresh and CalWorks, uh, so that the intention really is that where possible if they already meet uh the work requirements or are exempt from the work requirements for the other programs, then they would uh also it will also mean that they would be exempt or meet the work requirements for Medi-Cal.

Uh so just wanted to highlight that um real quickly.

Um on the next slide, we also wanted to talk about the six month redeterminations.

Um you might notice a little bit of a pattern as I go through it where a lot of the uh changes uh that are part of HR one affect uh specific group of individuals.

Um so just to get into the six-month redeterminations, again, effective January of 2027 uh redeterminations will occur for adult expansion enrollees, so the same individuals that um will be subject to work requirements.

Um they will be required to perform uh redeterminations for Medical every six months.

The uh redetermination requirements, uh the six-month redetermination requirement will not apply to tribal members, pregnant individuals, and children, however.

So if there is someone in the household that is part of this uh uh expansion group, uh they will be the ones that are subject to the uh the six-month redeterminations.

Uh DHCS, again, the state does not expect there to be major changes to as far as how we're uh doing the redeterminations, it will largely mirror the current um annual redetermination process that we already have for Medi-Cal.

It's just that for these individuals, they will have to do it twice a year, other than uh rather than um once a year, which is what um uh our Medi-Cal uh beneficiaries are currently doing.

Um and with that, that's what we have what we know currently about these two um policy changes.

Um so right now I'll I'll I will go ahead and pass it back to Hannah to go over some additional changes this time um based on the uh state budget.

Thank you, Juan.

Um so uh on top of all the federal changes, there's state changes too, as I'm sure you are all aware.

Um and I'll walk through those now before I talk about impacts of both of these to the Medi-Cal program.

Um so this slide outlines the major Medi-Cal policies, uh policy changes that are enacted at the state level.

Um these changes primarily affect adults with unsatisfactory immigration status.

Um each provision has significant implications for eligibility access and service delivery in Alameda County.

So the first is uh the Medi-Cal enrollment freeze.

It will impact adults aged uh 19 and over who do not have satisfactory immigration status.

Uh this includes undocumented individuals, DACA recipients, asylum applicants, and others.

Um those already enrolled may retain coverage unless they lose eligibility for uh more than three months.

They will have to pay a $30 per month premium.

So that's the last provision there on this table.

Um in order to keep their coverage.

Um then, so there's a few other um items here too, just as far as a loss of dental coverage and uh some other provisions as well.

But oh, we can move to the next slide.

So this is getting back to looking at those federal Medicail work requirements and biannual redeterminations.

So this is going to affect uh individuals who are uh categorized as what's called M1 aid code.

So these are folks ages 19 uh through 65 years old who became eligible as a part of the Affordable Care Act.

Um and according to our data, an estimated 183,000 uh over 183,000 Alameda County residents will be subject to both those work requirements and uh biannual redeterminations.

And you can see uh those numbers by district.

Um I I want to say that our agency um you know we are um really motivated to meet these uh challenges head on.

Um and we have a very diverse staff that uh mirr the demographics of our clientele and of Alameda County.

Um these the next five graphs are a little confusing because the legend um there's an error on the legend, and so the dark blue is uh our staff and the uh light green is um clients, and this is a percent of total.

So I'll just go to since we're talking about Supervisor TAM in district three.

And I'll just point out here that we have staff that overrepresent our client, our clientele in the major racial brackets.

The only one in District 3 where that is not the case is the Hispanic population.

And that has a the client population has a larger percent of total than our eligibility staff.

And then in District 5, only the white client population is a larger percent of total than our eligibility staff.

For the additional considerations, there's a kind of a confluence between some of the federal provisions and the state provisions.

So for example, beneficiaries who are refugees, asylum, and parolees, and survivors of domestic violence who are not explicitly included in the definition of qualified immigrant will only be eligible for restricted scope Medi-Cal after October 1st, 2026.

And on the next slide, this is just a timeline of some of the major implementation timelines for for these provisions.

So the first is the state freeze on Medi-Cal that will go into effect in January 20.

Let's see.

And then in July, so sorry, the first July 2025 moratorium on streamlining eligibility rules, that already happened.

And then in January, there will be a freeze on the adult expansion population at the state level.

In January 2026, this is the removal of those dental benefits for folks that don't meet the qualified immigration status.

And then October 2026, that is a federal provision as well.

The redefinition of Q and Cs.

And then January 2027, the six-month redetermination and the work requirements will be going into place.

And then there's that the smaller provision around cost sharing, October 2028 for certain adults.

This is a federal provision.

And in October 2029, that database provision will be going into place.

And you'll see that they're pretty consistent.

We don't expect, so with any of these changes, especially if there are major administrative requirements, like based on our agency, the state does have a responsibility to compensate us for those changes.

So we don't expect our allocations to change too much as a real at least not quickly.

So we don't expect too many changes on those important metrics.

And so that could potentially address the payment error rates that we talked about.

And just in general, automating a lot of the validation that our eligibility staff currently work on.

So SB 105 will allocate 53.6 million for activities rate related to the CalFresh payment error rate mitigation strategy, as I mentioned.

And then there's 30 million just for the automation alone to address the CalFresh payment error rate.

20 million for the Cal Food Program, which is going to be like a funding for food banks.

And then 40 million for the county ABOD administration.

One thing SB 144 did was it exempted foster youth and former foster youth with unsatisfactory immigration status from the medical enrollment freeze and monthly premium.

And then the last budget trailer bill on the next slide allocated funding just for CDSS to work on these efforts as well to reduce the payment error rate.

The last slide is just as you heard us uh mention, there are a lot of unknowns.

And so we tried to kind of list all of those out here.

And so I don't think I'm going to go into all of these in detail, but one thing that we mentioned was that we have this ABOD error waiver through January, and we're waiting to see whether FNS will rescind that waiver.

There's also a great deal of uncertainty as to whether the state will assign the payment error rate related costs to counties.

And questions remain regarding which non-citizens will retain eligibility and whether those losing access to federally funded CalFresh could instead be supported through state funds under the uh California Food Assistance Program.

Um then again, just implementation of HR1 changes in 2027 and beyond remains uncertain, pending CMS guidance.

And that is all we have.

That was very much needed.

Thank you.

It's a lot this has been a common theme all day today, starting with the health committee, then with Pal with the legislation that you talked about, and then getting a more in-depth discussion.

And then before this meeting, Supervisor Fortunata Pass and I had a conversation about you know how do we like sure the community-based organizations, especially the healthcare get the same information because they're talking to us.

You know, we're not the experts you are in terms of eligibility determination, but I'm sure she can talk more about it because she has a lot of questions.

Well, firstly, I want to say that was a tremendous amount of information.

So thank you so much for all of this.

I mean, it is really what we've been waiting for.

Uh so Hannah Roland and Juan, thank you so much, and Director Ford.

Um, I will try to not take up too much time knowing that we've got one more item in front of us.

Um, in terms of the key unknowns, do you have a sense of what the timeline will be to get the clarity on the waiver and other questions?

Uh yeah, I can speak to that.

We are we're anticipating that um FNS has stated they're going to give out guidance to states by the end of this month.

So we expect a good majority of our answers to be our questions to be answered by then.

Okay, and that's for the waiver.

And what about whether the state will cover um the per related costs to counties and some of these other questions?

Is that all that's not a discussion that the state is having at this time?

Um, maybe down the line if funding becomes an issue, but currently everything we've been told with our meetings with the state is not for the foreseeable future, but they left the door open.

Okay.

Thank you.

And I think um, you know, we have been trying to get a handle on these impacts, including um not only the health committee and this committee, also the Alameda County Together for All committee.

So just in terms of understanding the impact to individuals in the county, um, I think I heard that about 13,000 Alameda County residents could be impacted by CalFresh.

Did I hear that correctly?

And is there yet an estimate on how many will be impacted by losing Medi-Cal?

So the 13,000 was potentially, yes, for ABOD for the work requirements.

We also anticipate, or we've been told that there is potential that the changes to the utility subsidy amounts could also cause very uh unique cases where they needed the utility allowance to qualify for CalFresh.

That's a small percentage, but we're trying to get the numbers on that as well.

So there is also a small percentage of cases that could be influenced, impacted by that.

Thank you.

And the 13,000 was just uh sorry, that was just the um the folks that would have been subjected to the ABOD work requirements before HR one was passed.

So there's you know, under HR1, the age limits have increased, and there's new um folks that were previously exempted who are now going to be subject to those work requirements, including um our uh homeless clients.

And so that even is like 9,000 above the 13,000.

So, you know, somewhere in the range of maybe 20,000 is what we're estimating, but it's hard to hard to know.

But but I think it's important to mention it, those homeless individuals might meet another exemption.

That's so there's no absolute number.

Okay, but then potentially being in the thousands.

Yes.

Yes.

And is there a number, a potential number yet for those who will be impacted by losing Medi-Cal coverage?

Yeah, so that is um that's that slide that uh talks about actually don't have the slide number, but um, it talks about the Medi-Cal work requirements and the biannual redetermination.

So this is gonna impact that same the same kind of client uh uh uh subpopulation that uh we call it the M1 aid codes, but uh 183,000 um will be subjected to those work requirements.

Um and then, you know, I I think I'd also say too um that work requirements for Medi-Cal or for Medicaid have been rolled out in other um states before.

And so we can kind of take a look at um those outcomes to see if there's no changes made, how many folks will lose coverage?

And we're estimating that uh again, without any changes made, just status quo, um, up to 55,000 may lose coverage due to the work requirements alone.

Is that Medicaid?

Are those Medicaid numbers, Hannah?

Are they what?

Medicaid numbers?

Yes.

You said 55,000?

Uh yes.

For for Medi-Cal here in Alameda County.

So it's 183,000 would be subjected to the work requirements.

And then, you know, presumably a large portion of those would continue to, you know, um meet those requirements, but some another portion wouldn't, and so 55,000 would not.

Yeah, so I don't um with HANA, I don't see the page numbers, but um it says local impact, and it's broken down by supervisorial district, and so supervisor for us for your district.

Looks like it's about that spawn number.

Um 45,000, 46,000.

Yeah, yeah.

And that's again the people that would be subjected to uh the work requirements, not the ones that we would estimate estimate would be lost.

Right, right.

So we could potentially try to mitigate that impact.

Um just a couple more questions.

Do we have a sense of what the financial impact of the cuts will be?

Um, or the projected increase in overall cost to SSA.

Um then finally, you know, is there a potential strategy for keeping uh folks on these benefits, in particular um supporting people working.

Um I would like to hear a little bit more about what qualifies as community service to see if there's ways that we can help encourage that, for example.

Um, so those are my questions largely on the impact side of things.

Yeah, so um we uh the topic of work requirements, I would say is a very dynamic conversation right now, um, both locally and at the state level.

I think we don't, you know, we are waiting for that federal guidance uh before we can really know um you know how we can move forward.

Um so uh yeah, so so it's it's it's kind of hard to say, but it is an area that we are looking closely at.

And I think Juan wanted to add to that discussion.

Um you you brought up uh uh something that kind of uh rang a bell in my mind regarding the um getting the information out there.

So right now we do have uh partnerships with seven different community-based organizations that currently assist with Medi-Cal and CalFresh outreach and also application and renewal assistance.

Those contracts actually recently got extended through June of 2027, and we've been actively uh disseminating that information with them.

Um we've also been sharing any trainings um and um outreach material developed by the state with these community partners to get that information out there.

Um right now we are letting them know about the two uh things that are coming up the soonest, which is the enrollment freeze and the uh uh return of the asset limits for Medi-Cal in January.

Um so we are working on it piece by piece so that we don't overload information on people.

Um, but we are constantly um in discussion with those uh partner organizations so that the community is well aware of when these things are about to happen.

Could could you list those seven partner organizations?

Uh yes, we have Alameda Health Consortium, East Bay Agency for Children, Family Bridges, uh Korean Community Center of the East Bay or Roots Community Health and La Familia.

And they are helping the county with the outreach on the enrollment and redetermination.

Correct.

So they they perform outreach uh to the community uh and they have locations pretty much spread throughout the whole county.

Um uh pretty much all uh areas of the county are represented represented.

Uh they do a lot of the outreach, so outreach events, in-person outreach, uh um telephone online, all of that good stuff.

Um and then uh once they get people in, they schedule people in to assist them with um uh submitting applications and submitting their renewal paperwork.

Um and I I think that's one of the key things to make sure that people don't fall off, because uh to your point, we want to make sure that we're mitigating uh some of the people that fall off because right now we don't have a lot of information of who will fall off, but we do have information of who could potentially fall off.

Um considering that um quote unquote people will basically be grandfathered in the for example, individuals with unsatisfactory immigration status, they would be grandfathered into state covered full scope Medi-Cal if they keep up with their um redetermination requirements and with their eligibility requirements.

Um but if they miss that renewal um and they miss the three month grace period after that, they may fall off full scope Medi-Cal, and then when they enroll, they'll only be eligible to restricted scope Medi-Cal.

Um so that is information that we're trying to get out there to make sure that people don't fall off their full scope Medi-Cal because a lot of these um organizations also have case managers, so they are constantly working with community members to make sure that um people are up to date with their renewals uh so that they maintain their coverage.

And in terms of what HANA was speaking about the dynamic process, what the state told us last week, I was in Sacramento, is that um they don't expect the Fayettes to issue guidance until July of 2026 in a lot of these areas for Medicaid.

And then Roland, if you can share the form that we're sharing with the community for ABOT exemptions.

Yes, so uh for the uh for CalFresh for our ABOD population, the state did release a new optional or updated optional form.

It's uh the CF31 uh CF377.11E.

Um so we have communicated that out to all of our partners that we work with.

We've published it.

I just submitted an article for our e-publication to our partners, um, encouraging our partners, um, client advocates, community-based organizations, whenever they're helping clients um submit an application, submit a recertification, um submitting a mid-period report where they're adding someone to proactively encourage them to complete that form.

That form helps our staff identify what that client potentially identifies their exemption as for ABOD.

But again, our staff are trained to go through all of the exemptions as well, but it just kind of helps um key into certain um exemptions we could kind of focus in, make sure that we um evaluate those really closely.

And then we also work very closely with our legal advocates um homeless action center and East, I mean um Bal Bay Bay Area Legal Aid and for Homeless Action Center, they go to homeless encampments, and so we've shared the forum with them and asked that they also reach out to the homeless population that are currently located in different encampments.

That's all uh incredibly helpful.

Thank you.

Um seeing that District Five has uh the highest number of people who um may need to comply with these work requirements, I'd be very interested in learning more about the materials and outreach and whether my office can help doing some um outreach as well to make sure people are aware of these requirements and how they can stay enrolled.

Um and I'm also interested in hearing a little bit more about the vacancies in the divisions that are doing this work and whether well it looks like the vacancies are about 18% from the graph I saw.

Um, just knowing that things are in flux, and there's probably gonna be more work for the staff to do.

Is there enough capacity or will there be enough capacity with full staffing?

Um so we we have continuous hiring for our eligibility staff.

In addition, some of the automated fixes that the state will be putting in place will help to offset um the vacancy rate.

And with that additional funding, what the state communicated to us last week is that they hope to have a lot of the automated enhancements in place within the next three months or so.

So it's timely to help us with any work related increases.

Thank you.

And then finally, uh knowing that we are going to hear from staff about the essential county services fund of measure W.

Um, is there anything that you are ready to share with us in terms of recommendations or things we should consider?

Uh the only so I was at a Basque director's retreat last week.

The only thing that a few counties talked about is that um some board of supervisors are recommending certain funding sources to pay for the $30 that immigrants will have to pay to keep Medi-Cal coverage, because that's cheaper than having them fall off of Medi-Cal coverage.

So that could be a consideration for Measure W.

Thank you.

Thank you, Chair Town.

Thank you with those questions.

Um I'm just gonna ask a couple more overarching questions.

So when this came up this morning on the um at the health committee uh when Matt would draw from Alameda Alliance that was giving the presentation on the FY26, and then going forward, pretty much the same discussion occurred about uh there's a certain level of uncertainty in terms of the waivers and the exemptions.

But um Director Ford, you and I sit on the Alameda Alliance board, so does Alameda County Health, so does um Alameda Health Consortium, which has uh oversight and coordination over the federally qualified health clinics, so does the Alumna Health System.

And what we were trying to sort through is like before the September 30th meeting, um, because you are also talking about this in the context of Measure W, at least the essential county services portion.

It's like I'm mindful of the fact that you know, we're getting asked a lot of questions, which we don't have the expertise always to answer.

You guys are asked a lot of questions.

You have a bunch of different forums, so we're trying to be mindful that it might be better coordinated with uh like a okay.

Here's Supervisor Miley, who should not be here.

Supervisor Miley had this uh suggestion, and he had um looked at what we did back during the time that uh Gail Steele was here along with himself in putting together what they call Blue Ribbon Task Force, but I'm trying to figure out like uh are we duplicating things that the uh that Supervisor Fortunato Bass is sharing her with her ad hoc committee versus the work that we're doing with the outreach with CPAG, and then uh versus the the discussions you're having with your partner, like the seven partnership groups that are doing outreach for the county that have contracts with the county, like trying to get that all um coordinated so we're not like duplicating and stretching you guys so thinly across different forums.

And so I wanted to just get your thoughts about the best forum to make sure that we we communicate outwardly, but also uh as we're trying to figure things out internally, what would be like that best option?

I think we can I can confidently say that there will be some duplication.

Um, not having attended the CPAC meeting, and I think Supervisor Fortunately Bass has her first meeting coming up Thursday.

I'm not sure what the agenda looks like, but um there will be some level of duplication for sure.

Um I think what's important is that social services is is the only entity that can do enrollment in Medi-Cal.

Um, there's no one else in Alameda County who can do it.

So I think when it comes to those conversations, we need to be a key partner and um keeping trying to keep our residents on Medi-Cal and CalFresh, and you know, and and just to get a sense of what we're doing internally.

We attend association meetings that others might not attend.

So we're hearing different information that's gonna help with enrolling or disenrollment of individuals throughout the county.

And I just I don't want to get too far ahead of the state, but I don't want everybody else to get too far ahead of social services either.

I I appreciate that.

And you're absolutely right.

I mean, sometimes the information we heard here are more speculation or their uh assumptions that other people made, like for example, at Oakland Thrives, we heard, oh, 20% of the people that are receiving CalFresh may get disenrolled.

And at that point, they were estimating it's a certain percentage of the 176,000.

Today we were hearing from Matt Withdroff that uh for FY26, we were looking at potentially 280,000 people that could be affected of the 400,000 clients within uh the Alameda Lions that receive Medical.

And you know, there's an overlap, obviously, with Alameda Health Systems, who's looking at 100 million dollars per year for the next three years in terms of impact because of people who are unable to pay because they may be losing their medical coverage.

So you know, having all that um cost connection is something that we need to make sure you know we don't like duplicate and that there's some efficiencies in it.

Yeah, and what you heard from me in April at the MOE budget um presentation is that 250,000 might lose coverage.

So information changes on a regular basis.

And I think, you know, in terms of technical information, social services might have the most up-to-date because we have the system that holds information for all those that are enrolled, currently enrolled in Medi-Cal and our CalFresh.

Okay.

And not everyone throughout the county have access to that eligibility system.

That's helpful.

Thank you.

Um, that's all the questions I had, but appreciate your presentation.

Each and every one of you.

That was very helpful.

And I just want to add one last thing.

Um Hannah talked about the 20 million dollars that the state identified for food banks, and that's for the pop the immigrant population that could lose access to food.

Do we have any public comments on this item?

There are no speakers.

Thank you.

The last item of the day.

Finally, and thank you for your patience.

Um, we're just gonna give you an update on our um the audit findings, the audit findings and response from the California Department of Aging as it relates to the triple A and our finance department.

I think it was last year, board members and his pre-days use supervisor Fortune Auto Bass.

Board members received a packet from California Department of Aging, uh, about an inch thick, um, that was outlining all the findings and and what we needed to do to respond to those findings through a corrective action plan.

And I did share with you, Supervisor TAM that we would bring that to a social services committee, and we're ready now to share that information with you.

Um, we have Faith Battles, the assistant agency director, Robert Woolley, the financial services director, Howard Chen, the financial services deputy director here, and then a host of other staff who provide input.

Jennifer.

Oh, I don't see Howard.

Good afternoon.

Thank you for the opportunity to share.

It's my first time meeting you.

So pleasure to meet you.

I am Faith Battles.

I'm the assistant agency director for the Department of Adult and Aging Services.

The area agency on aging, which we commonly reference as AAA, is within the Department of Adult and Aging Services.

Also in the audience is Jennifer Stevens Pierre.

She's the program manager that is responsible for the triple A.

And Kim Fogle is a management analyst that also is in the triple A.

So to next slide, please.

So to make sure everybody is on the same page, I want to be sure to introduce everybody to who the key players are for this.

This will help get some context to what happened with the particular monitoring.

The California Department of Aging basically oversees the triple A.

There are several in the state.

We are one of 33.

Every triple A is not necessarily within a social services agency.

Sometimes they're outside of an agency, but ours is in the agency.

Then, of course, you have the triple A, as I stated earlier.

And basically think of the triple A as the first place of resource for older adults in our county and dependent adults.

And we coordinate services that include family caregiver support programs, food and nutrition programs, legal assistance, senior information and assistance, ombudsman services, and senior center services and visiting.

And then lastly, the third partner in the work is the finance department that is within the social services agency, and they support the AAA with budgets and information and analysis, accounting claiming, contracting, et cetera.

There was a recent change in the agency where the financial aspects of the triple A was shifted to the finance department, hence their involvement in the particular monitoring.

Next page, please.

Okay, so monitoring is a pretty significant responsibility from the state, but there also is a responsibility from the county.

So CWD CDA, I'm sorry, they monitor triple A's and they do two types of monitoring.

One is a program monitoring that happens every two years, and the second is a fiscal audit that happens every two years.

We're talking about the program monitoring in this session.

The grant requirements could require that a monitoring happens more often.

It just depends on what type of funding they're receiving.

So the monitoring and frequency of the oversight, we could have an annual review by CDA, biennial site visits, program specific site visits, financial and compliance audits, and then financial closeout reports.

Next slide, please.

So for us, last year in November, we underwent the program monitoring for the AAA.

So they reviewed CDA as they.

They came and looked at all of our planning documents, our policy manual, our request for proposal or RFPs, contracts, and also financial records.

At the end of that monitoring, CDA issued findings that stated that the AAA had substantial financial risks due to policies and procedures that had fallen out of compliance due to COVID.

When COVID happened, a lot of the processes that were in place to make the monitoring happen smoothly with all of the providers, they were suspended or relaxed because of the public safety threat.

And we fell into kind of an abyss with that relaxation, and this monitoring reminded us of what we needed to come back to do because of that.

They gave us a corrective action plan, and that identified to us what business practices and policies we had to restore and how we could eliminate risk and avoid fiscal liabilities.

So the three partners, triple A Finance and CDA met regularly and worked together.

We met just about weekly with CDA about the various findings.

They were quite helpful to us.

Finance did the same, and we were able to respond to the corrective action plan.

Next slide, please.

Here are the areas that they were most concerned about.

We broke them down into seven.

Contract resolution was one, account record reconciliation, fiscal policies and procedures for fiscal staff and our subcontracted providers, which would be our triple A providers, late susmission of expenditures, budgets, and closeouts, absent complaint written policy and procedures for subcontracted providers.

Our contracts were not limited to one-year terms, and well, contracts are not supposed to be limited to one year terms, or they were not.

I'm getting that confused.

I'll come back to that.

Robert will likely speak more to that.

Insufficient monitoring of subcontracted service providers.

So of those seven, we were responsible for reconciling each and every one, and we met every week with CDA to make sure we reconciled each and every one.

Next slide.

So the summary of the findings, they put them in different categories, and without going into minutiae detail, we had several findings under staffing administration, management of service providers, which is directly connected to how we staffed the AAA.

Our procurement and RFPs had findings that was also related to not having contracts B one year terms.

We were trying to be more efficient, and Robert will speak to that.

3B supportive services, we had some findings around information and assistance, legal assistance, case management, and support services.

And our HICAP program had findings as well as our senior community service employment program, CalFresh, and financial fiscal.

We had a good number of findings that we needed to remediate.

Next slide.

We've hired several, and they have separated from us to go on to do different work, and it is a classification that was really difficult for us to recruit.

The CDA would not accept alternatives.

We offered a few while we were in an active recruitment effort.

They stated that that was not an option.

The nutrition programs that we have are 75% of the AAA's budget.

Your board is likely familiar with that because of the $2 million that had been added to the senior nutrition program.

So it's a huge part of our contracts.

And that registered dietitian, she or he or they are experts to ensure that food is prepared safely, the menus are all nutritious and appropriate, and that our congregate and home delivered meals give our adults nutritious food.

So we worked really closely with them, and we were finally able to hire a registered dietitian in July.

Her name is Zale Etienne, and she is hitting the ground running and getting a lot of good work done.

So that was a huge finding that we needed to resolve, one of the outstanding ones.

Next slide, please.

We also wanted to make sure that there were policies and procedures in place for our triple A programs that would be able to inform them about their rights.

So there were three.

Next slide, please.

So not only does the state monitor us, we have to monitor our providers.

We have about 36 providers that deliver services to seniors, over 90 contracts.

That's a lot of contracts.

And the triple A is responsible for monitoring the contracts to make sure that the providers are following through with the requirements of the funding.

CDA told us that we needed to quickly pivot back to doing monitorings in site or on-site with the providers.

They have been suspended from 2020 to 2023, about three years, and that the shortage of staff and volunteers for both the AAA and the providers needed to be addressed.

So we in-house were able to get monitoring done for the 29 contracts that were current for monitorings in response to that cap.

And we have a plan now to do those monitorings on site annually.

So we've corrected that issue.

That was a significant finding.

Now they were all current, and the AAA actually has the staffing to be able to do the monitoring because we did need more staff to deal with those 90 contracts to monitor each and every one.

Next slide, please.

So moving forward, the corrections and recommendations for the contracts as implemented is really timely because now we're pushing towards a new cycle of RFPs.

They last for four years for our programs and our services.

And we expect to issue nine RFPs for those 90 contracts that we have.

And the improvements that we were able to put in place as a result of the CDA monitoring include specific service units to be provided in those contracts, updated data and reporting policy for all contractors, timely data submissions to CDA, and adhering to CDA's procurement policies.

Next slide.

Good evening.

The three key financial uh findings outdated or missing program fiscal procedures and subchactor documents, gaps and fiscal monitoring and multi-year contracts.

So as Faith mentioned before, there was a move where prior triple A took care of their own finance and contracting.

That was moved under contracts and finance that all of SSA uses.

So the outdated missing and fiscal procedures and some contractor documents, we're following the same procedures we follow for everything else, and that conforms with federal rules and regulations.

So that basically cleared those findings.

The fiscal monitoring, um, essentially they were doing the same monitoring practice.

CDA did have one additional step they wanted us to make.

They require a visit every two years, whereas ours does a risk factor which determines the level of monitoring they're gonna receive.

So now we just have an automatic visit at least every two years.

And then the multi-year contracts that we had modeled them after uh San Francisco, thinking they'd be compliant with the one year, and CDA basically took a heart stance and said it can only say one year.

So we've worked with them and county council, and we now have a new for the next four year period.

It's gonna be a one year contract with three one year options.

So only one year.

So it meets that requirement.

The next slide.

And then this just goes over all the other uh fiscal improvements, and um, as mentioned before, each one of them there were some minor changes.

CDA wanted something on an invoice or um for us to tweak a procedure.

We've cleared it with them and made sure it's compliant with them.

So next slide.

And then so this is just the outcomes.

Uh essentially, we've addressed all the findings of CDA and basically cleared them all.

Next slide.

Okay.

So I can thank you.

I can conclude this part of the discussion.

The triple A is a very important entity in this county.

It is a small but mighty group of individuals in finance and in triple A nestled within this department that do their very best to make sure seniors are getting what they need so that they can live their lives peacefully at home, least restrictive, and they have everything that they need.

It is working with CDA, there's a lot of requirements connected to these contracts, extraordinarily so, more than other contracts.

So it is uh it takes a really fine tooth comb and a microscope to make sure that we are compliant.

The support that we got from CDA and the Office of Finance and the Board of Supervisors and Andrea Ford's office was critical to help us get back on the right track.

We are doing well in terms of being compliant with what the monitoring asked of us, and we are hopeful that we can stay in that same vein with the additional staffing that we've had in triple A so that we can continue with this really robust relationship we have with CDA, which in part helped us to move through this really difficult corrective action plan.

I'm happy to answer any questions you may have.

Thank you.

Thank you, uh, especially for presenting the findings and actually a corrective action plan to resolve those findings, which is important.

Um Supervisor Fortana Bas, questions and comments.

Thank you.

Just a few comments.

Um, if we or the public are interested in seeing the full report, is that available?

Yes, we can have the full report be available.

It is public.

We provided the report to all of the triple A providers as well as your board of supervisors back in February.

Um, and then I wanted to look back at see, page 12.

This is a fair amount of policies to be in compliance with and procedures.

Do we have the staff capacity to monitor and be in compliance with all of these things?

Um Robert, that's a question for you.

Yes, it's a requirement with all of your federally funded contracts or money that we're receiving anyway.

So we have a whole system that we use in finance to make sure we're in that compliance.

Thank you.

And I am curious about um whether there are opportunities, just given how the funding landscape is changing with the federal budget and various policy impacts.

I am curious about whether there's opportunities to really streamline and improve systems, you know, also knowing that some of our cities also provide some level of senior services, including nutrition.

Is there um any strategic planning or any sort of stepping back to look at whether there's more efficiencies and streamlining or coordination with our cities who might also deliver similar services?

I think there were under ARPA, but I'll let Faith um expand on that.

Well, and I'd like to, Jennifer, if you want to come up and speak to this.

One of the things that the county did to make sure we know what the services are that older adults need is the countywide area plan, and that was polling all of interested parties, older adults that are impacted to state what type of services they do need.

Jennifer can expand a little bit more.

I will say that the cities have services that they provide, but the county overlay of the services helps the city to provide their services because they're simply not enough.

So the efficiencies that could happen with the delivery of service, it does require us to be in consistent communication with the cities around the services that they provide, and definitely making sure that our older adults know that the county has a service, and so do the cities have a service.

And I'll because Jennifer speaks more closely to the contractors.

I want to make sure I give her a chance to add her feedback.

Um I'll just add that in most cases, um, the count the cities are being funded by the area agency on aging and the funding that they provide um specifically for older adult meals, um, just supplements what we give.

Like you know, was mentioned earlier in the presentation, over 85% of our budget goes into senior nutrition.

Um so when you talk about streamlining it, um, you know, there are some things that we look at as far as you know, the probability of a centralized kitchen or something like that, but for right now, no, it it would be difficult.

The cities don't put enough funding in my in my um knowledge, based on my knowledge, to really fund their own nutrition programs.

But Jennifer, if you looked at it the other way, so are there opportunities for the county to better support the cities, acknowledging they don't have lots of funding.

I'm sorry, can you repeat are there ways to bring some of the city funding into the county to help streamline the process to serve those individuals, um, the seniors that disabled?

I mean, there's opportunities for us to work together to make sure that that's happening, just looking at the different districts and making sure that we are we're streamlining as much as possible.

What I will say is that you know, each one of the nutrition providers have a specific service area that they provide services to.

Um, and based on that, there should not be an overlap.

But where there is an overlap, I think that that's where we have the opportunity to streamline services.

Thank you.

Just uh two questions on the topic of nutrition.

I know that during uh when ARPA funding was available, there were some contracts that were really focused on culturally appropriate uh meals and foods.

I'm curious if that is still continuing.

You your question was there were there contracts specific to um providing culturally uh culturally appropriate foods.

So I used to represent in the city of Oakland, Central Oakland, which included Little Saigon and Chinatown, for example, and during COVID, a lot of the food that was delivered was much more culturally appropriate than it had been previously, and I'm curious if that's still happening.

So part of our um efforts in RFP is to really target culturally appropriate foods for we realize we are part of a very diverse population.

So currently we provide meals to JSA, which is our Japanese population, um, VASEB, which is our Vietnamese population.

Um we also have um populations where we target Korean as well as our Chinese population.

So we do have currently we have those types of meals.

Um and our goal in our future RFPs is to continue to target um culturally appropriate services to provide those meals.

Thank you.

And last question regarding the future RFP or the nine RFPs to approximately 90 CBOs, the senior services coalition has been advocating for ongoing funding versus one time, um, as well as expanding their capacity.

I'm curious if those RFPs are going to address any of the issues that they have been advocating for.

I think that that is so I'll let you answer that question.

Um we will put out the RFPs for the services, and again, in our RFPs, what we talk about, uh the services are contingent on the funding.

Um, and then it just, you know, with the funding has a lot to do with what the county decides they want to support um to um maintain funding levels for those different services.

I would agree with your response, Jennifer.

So I think the the operative phrase is it's contingent upon funding.

Thank you.

Yeah.

Anything in excess over what the state or FAS provide would have to be county general fund.

And we don't control how that's spent.

So along those lines, uh obviously during the Measure W discussion, we kept hearing from different groups, senior groups, um that different uh ethnic groups that uh they had been receiving ARPA funding and then they fell off the fiscal cliff, and they want to see that continued because the the need hasn't uh gone away from uh the pandemic.

Um was that also part of the I guess the concerns that were um determined during the audit by CDA is that we we don't have a rigorous way of counting for some of those, or was it just overall our process?

I would say it was overall our process.

Um just to lay a little bit of foundation.

During COVID, the triple A we received historic funding, um, you know, for older adults, and you know, in which took our funding levels higher than we probably have ever had them in history, right?

And so coming out of COVID, what you found was that we kind of defaulted back to our regular funding levels.

And so ARPA really didn't have ARPRA was a point in time it really didn't have anything to do with with that component, but I will tell you what ARPA did um reveal for us is that we were able to uh you know outreach to older adults who historically probably were qualified for triple A services but did not take part in them in them.

Um and then we also um were able to reach a population that historically never qualified for our services that were able to do it, and that's that forgotten middle class, you know, our retired teachers who were just right above that poverty level.

So we were able to provide services to them as well.

Okay.

Um so a lot of these uh findings, especially on the financial side, you know, basically encourages more monitoring, some oversight, some accountability for what you get for your contract.

And you you faith mentioned that there's a higher level of uh strictness when it comes to uh these federal um contracts that's particularly with triple A, but I think you have heard in some of the prior discussions at the board, you know, supervisor, the president of the board, Supervisor Halbert would like to see it transcend to all contracts to have more performance base, some sort of knowing whether we are most impactful for those that are most in need.

So in terms of like other contracts, because you have way more than the 90 contracts that you have for triple A.

Do they have varying levels of oversight?

I would let Robert speak to that because contracts unit is under him.

Yeah, um, basically the the federal rules, I mean, are essentially the same for everybody who's using federal funds.

Sometimes you'll have somebody like CDA interpret the rules differently, or you know, try to put on their own rule to focus on something.

Um because the state is contributing money also.

In general, when we uh when we have any kind of funding or we go to contract, we try to meet all the federal requirements as much as possible, right?

Um even if we're just gonna use county general fund.

Um and that does help us because in some of the instances where we had ARPA money, because we met federal requirements, we were able to use uh ARPA funding.

Um and so we always try to do that, but it is the same with all of our other contracts.

They all have the same federal processes, the monitoring, everything else, and even when it is county general fund, the monitoring and the um uh you know the RPA measures, everything is we're putting all of those into the contracts.

And then Robert, what role does um a single audit play in monitoring process?

Yeah, it's the same um the single audit.

So every year right now we're sending out letters to all of our vendors how much federal funds um they used in their contract for last fiscal year.

Um, depending on the amounts, it has to show up in a certain way in their audit um in their auditive financials.

They're required to send that back to us.

We actually have an outside CPA review all of those and ask them to make corrections, or I then send them out to the vendor that you know your audit report is correct, it has everything, or these are the corrections you need to make, or these are our concerns.

And so we do that with all of our contracts.

Okay.

And that is a federal requirement.

Okay.

That is done with everybody.

Thank you.

My last question has more to do with what you discussed about, you know, streamlining because a lot of the prepared meal providers, whether it's Spectrum, whether it's community kitchens, whether it's Presbyterian church, they come to the Board of Supervisors and there's a contract that's issued through probably the RP process, but they say it's not enough, so they come to the individual board offices and ask for allotments.

And then so when I looked at one, I was trying to get a composite budget to understand where their sources of funding are coming from.

So like, you know, SOS meals and wheels serve prepared meals in kind of like the same area that Spectrum serves, and then but the office of KCCEB, who serves um culturally competent meals, I mean culturally appropriate meals are also in the same vicinity.

So how do we like make sure that we're getting the most bang for our buck when it comes to contracting with uh prepared meal providers?

Should it be centralized?

I'd like Jennifer to add to that.

I'll say a few things.

I'm sorry.

I'd like Jennifer to respond to your question and I'll say a few things in addition to what she's gonna share.

Meals are reimbursed differently based on the type of meal it is.

So a home delivered meal is reimbursed at a different rate than a congregate meal is reimbursed.

The providers have strong opinions about how many meals they should serve basis how versus how many meals they have funding to serve.

That's another issue that we face.

When we do the countywide area plan, we have a lot of discussions about where the services are needed and how many of those services are needed.

That's another piece.

Another piece is also the older Americans act is traditionally for the most needy individuals.

When COVID was here and there was ARPA funding, it was floodgates open and everybody could receive the meals.

But if they if we went true to what the Older Americans act required, it would naturally kind of shrink the number of people that will be eligible for those types of meals.

We also have meal providers that are very modern and efficient in their services.

They have gotten new equipment, they've figured out a way to package meals in a way that may be more cost effective and they can serve more clients versus some providers that may not be focused on that particular area.

So you're correct, supervisor Tam.

Their their needs are their desire for their needs are very different based on how they're running their program and how many clients they serve and what types of meals they're serving to their clients.

And then I'll let Jennifer add the rest.

Yeah.

Just to add a little context, um SOS is our home delivered meal provider.

So they're they're feeding um older adults who are in their home.

And then when you have Spectrum, for example, like the list that you gave of some of the churches and some of the on-site, um, Spectrum is one of our congregate meal programs.

And so they will have multiple sites throughout the county where people come in and they actually eat there as part of a congregate meal.

Um you will have in some districts where there's an overlap in services.

So, like for example, I'll take Vasep, for example, they're located in San Leandro on the border of Oakland.

But when we do, when we fund our ethnic meals, they're countywide services.

So they serve, you know, the consumer, if they're in that ethnic base and they prefer to have that culturally appropriate meal, then they will go with that culturally appropriate location.

So they are a countywide.

Faith also mentioned when we talk about more bang for your buck and how do we really support the nutritious program.

She talked a little bit about equipment.

We part of our um responsibility with the triple A is to also assist our nutrition providers with infrastructure.

Um, things that would allow them to do more with uh, you know, like for SOS, we purchase a sandwich trade line.

So now they have the ability to produce, you know, 500 meals versus 300 meals, or you know, most times when you see the vans.

I think um, Supervisor Cam, you were you you had an opportunity to see that with the holiday baskets.

Um, in most cases, when you see that, it is the triple A that purchase, I would say between 85 to 90% of those items.

And so when you're getting those requests, what you're getting them is very specific to your region and them and their attempt not to have wait lists is normally when they'll come to you for that kind of funding.

Okay.

I I'm I'm just thinking like if they have a contract with with your department, and I know it's based on the cost of the meals.

Um you would think you'd ask for what you need rather than supplement.

Yeah, there's a part of the older Americans act where we don't fund 100% of a service, right?

Because the older American Act says that we, you know, there is a there's a spirit behind it that you're also responsible for fundraising.

So normally that percentage is like an 80-20.

Like we're responsible, like we, the older American Act will fund 80%, but there is a spirit in the Older Americans Act that says that there's a need for you to do voluntary contributions.

You saw the policy that we you know, that was one of our findings from the state.

And then on top of that, to do fundraising.

And so that is how you you share up a meal.

And so with Spectrum, for example, I'll take them, they have 13 sites.

And so they're directly bringing the food to those sites.

So they're putting their proposals together based on the number of sites that they have.

Now, what the partners may be doing, it may do in the community on top of that, that may be what they're coming to you for meals that are, you know, uh maybe older adults who don't qualify for the service or um people who are under the age limit.

Um it there can be a variety of reasons why you're getting those requests.

That's true.

I and I have been uh to the congregate meal servings during, especially around Thanksgiving or during different periods uh in my district, both in San Leandro, uh at the senior center and at Mastic, and and they are congregate meals, and obviously people have to qualify.

Uh so I I was just wondering how come it doesn't seem to they they keep saying it cost them $10 to prepare meal, but then they only get reimbursed uh a portion of that.

And you're you're saying that they have a partnership opportunity to fundraise.

It just seems kind of awkward for them to fundraise from the same entity that is giving them the contract.

Well, they they would fundraise if I understood what you said correctly, they would fundraise you know through their through the community.

No, they they ask each board office like for $30,000.

Yes, yes, yes.

That's their fundraising as well.

Yeah.

But they could fundraise in a different way.

They can host galas, they could have their own type of events.

There's no rule for how they fundraise.

I think it's I think it's probably simplest or maybe easiest at times to come directly to a board of supervisor to ask for what they need.

But it's it's the sky is the limit for how they can fundraise.

And the voluntary contributions from the older adults that are getting the meals is not going to be that impactful because they probably don't have that kind of um discretionary funding, but they should be making an effort to take whatever funding that they can receive.

And the last thing I'll say on it, or another point to add is the price of food has gone up more than what the federal administration or even the state may be able to fully compensate the counties or these triple A partners for.

And over the years, we have provided and an increase on top of what they had already been given to try to adjust some of that cost expense.

But frankly, we probably are not keeping pace with inflation and the cost of food delivery and service prep and all that now.

And we do look at the consumer price index, the CPI to look at what the cost of food is, and faith is right.

We're, you know, we don't we're we're we're not keeping up really with the ability to increase the contract amounts when we see that happening.

Um and we are gonna try in the new RFP to address that disparity um with the cost of foods, um, realizing that the food costs have gone up as well.

And I just wanted to make one more point um around the fundraising.

You know, the providers are encouraged to reach out to their city partners, like I'll take the city of Fremont, for example.

So they're encouraged to not only, I mean, we we're we're their primary funding source.

We don't fund all of their services, but when they're housed in like a city, like the city of Fremont that has robust services, we really encourage them to work with their city partners, but then also to reach out to the board of supervisors as well when they have um when they're providing services in their districts as well, realizing that they may have the um uh limited capacity to do full fundraising.

Yeah, I appreciate that distinction because clearly uh we are the city for the unincorporated area.

So if they're serving the unincorporated, it makes sense um to come to us.

As things escalate, but we are going to be getting to a point where if we see people losing their CalFresh coverage, um it's it's like triaging different needs.

And if if you're trying to meet the older Americans Act, but supplement it for those that uh may need but may not fall into that category, then you got a whole category of people who won't even get food.

So that's all I had to say.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Appreciate the feedback.

Is there any other questions that we can answer for you?

I'm fine.

Um do we have any public comments on this item?

There are no speakers.

Thank you.

Thank you very much for that presentation.

Um, do we have any public comments on non-agenda items today?

We have one online speaker.

Okay.

Kelly, go ahead.

Thank you.

First of all, I'd like to thank this board for um having a quorum present here today.

That's great.

Uh quorum of the board of the two supervisors.

Um I'd like to uh uh point uh point out the uh county, you know, call back to the uh idea that contracts need to be coordinated and unified and coordinated.

Um and if you go back, look at item three, the purple group on today's agenda, the rebranding.

That was something they brought in an outside uh uh PR agency, they did all this work.

And if you look at the logo, it doesn't match up with any logo of Alameda County.

Um so the county has no unified voice.

The county does not speak with one voice, does not look like one entity.

In fact, if you look at the PR agencies, it's uh divided up into God knows how maybe 20 different PR agencies, all putting out a different color, a different message, a different look, a different feel.

Uh and um the the best example of this is item 29 on tomorrow's agenda, where one of the supervisors coming in with his own personal PR agency, the Varna group, and wants uh to do, you know, uh uh public outreach and uh communications uh for his district.

Uh and once again, they're gonna come up with their own uh style, their own color, their own feel.

So this county has no PR agency.

It's uh got 20 of them, and they're all doing different things with different colors.

Uh and it's it's really really uh uncoordinated.

Thank you.

There are no more speakers.

Thank you all for your presentations and very lively discussion meetings adjourned.

Recording stopped.