Good afternoon and welcome to the Alameda County Board of Supervisor Social Services Committee meeting for Monday, October 27th, 2025.

May have roll call, please.

Supervisor Fortunat.

Present, Supervisor TAM.

Present.

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Sure.

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Thank you.

Let's start with the first information item, which is the volunteer income tax assistance program for the 2024 tax year or tax season update.

Good afternoon.

Vice President TAM and Supervisor Fortunato Bas.

My name is Pamela Powell, Executive Program Coordinator with the Social Services Agency.

I'm joined by Marissa Hollenbach, who served as this year's lead VIDA liaison.

So together we had the privilege of supporting the 2025 Volunteer Income Tax Assistance Program or VIDA, working closely with site coordinators, staff, volunteers, and community partners to write free tax preparation services to our residents.

Thank you for the opportunity to share a summary of this year's tax season, including key outcomes and recommendations for next tax season.

Next slide.

So here's the agenda of today's presentation.

We'll start with an overview of the VITA program, followed by our preparation process.

Then we will review VITA data by sites covering total returns, averages, and populations served.

We'll then discuss the key highlights and outcomes, reflect on areas of improvement, and share a few recommendations for the next tax season.

Then we'll conclude with recognizing our amazing volunteers in a quick video of our VIDA and DeVere celebration this past May.

So since 2002, the Alameda County Social Services Agency has partnered with the United Way Bay Area's free tax help program to offer free tax preparation services to low and moderate income individuals and families through VITA sites across the county.

The VIDA program helps residents file accurate tax returns, navigate the tax system, and access free funds and credits such as the earned income tax credit, all at no charge.

Additionally, the VIDA program aligns with the Alameda County's Vision 2036 goals of building a thriving and resilient population and supporting a prosperous and vibrant economy by increasing financial stability and access to resources in underserved communities.

Next slide.

Thank you.

So for planning and operation, we collaborated with community partners, including the IRS, United Way Bay Area, and site points of contact to develop the program timeline and coordinate logistics across all five CIDA locations.

We coordinated and led volunteer training and orientation sessions, including site reservations, security scheduling, and facilitation by tax law trainers.

We also manage the IRS certification process and coordinated the distribution of training materials and supplies.

In terms of site operations, so opening day was January 29th, 2025.

The Gale Steel Enterprise and Thomas L.

Berkeley sites were open on Tuesdays and Wednesdays from 5 30 to 8 30 p.m.

and also on Saturdays from 9 a.m.

to 2 p.m.

Our San Leandro sites were every Wednesday.

We worked with our county ITD to ensure Wi-Fi and printing capabilities at satellite sites and coordinate it with site points of contact to manage room setup and secure storage of program supplies.

In terms of our end of year celebration, at the end of the tax season, we celebrated to recognize volunteer contributions.

We had certificates of appreciation signed by our agency director Andrea Ford, raffle prizes, and photo collages that showcase memories from past tax seasons, and we'll share a quick video of that later at the end of our presentation.

In terms of volunteer engagement survey, this was sent after the end of the tax season, and this we use to gather feedback on the training, the site experience, and our growth opportunities.

We use some of these insights in our recommendations that we'll go over later.

So out of about 80 volunteers, we had a 30% return rate in terms of or response rate rather for the survey.

Next, I'll hand it off to Marissa to discuss the data for each site.

Thank you, Pamela.

Hello, my name is Marissa.

I was the lead VIDA liaison and have had the privilege of spending time at each site.

Before I go into the individual data, I will briefly share positive overall figures from the VIDA program.

And last tax season we filed over 2,000 tax returns between our five sites.

This slide shows the total amount of refunds issued through the VIDA program.

As you can see, the total amounts in orange, we have secured over 3 million in total refunds, over 1 million in total earned income tax credits, over 1 million in total child tax credits, and over 20,000 in total education credits.

These figures represent dollars returned directly to Alameda County households.

Next slide.

Okay, next we'll take a closer look at each FIDA site.

At our enterprise site, we primarily serve clients who lived in the East Oakland and San Leandro area.

We filed a total of 681 returns.

The average adjusted gross income of clients at this site was around 39,000.

This reflects that we are primarily assisting low to moderate income households.

For filing status, we had 190 head of household returns, 82 married filing jointly, and 392 single filers.

For age demographics, the largest segments of filers were between 25 to 34 and 45 to 54 years old, both at 16% each.

The remaining clients were mainly between 35 and 44 years old and under the age of 25.

77% of clients spoke English, 15.9% were Spanish speakers, and 7.1% spoke other languages.

Next slide.

Next at our Gale Steel site, we primarily served clients who lived in Hayward, Castro Valley, Union City, and San Leandro.

Total tax returns filed were 659.

The average adjusted gross income of clients at this site was 35,000.

And for filing status, we had a head of household 114, 135 married filing jointly, and 405 single filers.

Nearly half of all filers were age 55 or older, 23% between 65 to 84 years old, and 22% between the ages of 55 to 64.

We also serve working age adults, which 37% were equally distributed between 25 to 54 years old, and 8% under the age of 25.

72% of our clients spoke English, 16% spoke Spanish, 3% spoke Mandarin, and 9% communicated in other languages.

Next slide.

For the San Leandro Marina and the senior community site, these were grouped together due to both locations sharing the same electronic filing identification number issued by the IRS.

These sites primarily serve clients who lived in San Leandro and San Lorenzo, 166 returns filed.

The average adjusted gross income of clients at this site, at these sites was around 37,000.

For filing status, we had head of household 21, married filing jointly, 36, and 108 single filers.

A significant portion of filers were older adults, 34% were between 65 and older, 19% were between 55 and 64, indicating that over half of our clients were age 55 and above.

The remaining 46% of filers were split evenly between 34 and under, and 35 to 54.

72% of filers spoke English, 11.8% spoke Spanish, 9% spoke Cantonese, and 7.2% communicated in other languages.

Next slide.

At our Thomas L.

Berkeley site, we served clients who lived in the North Oakland, Berkeley, Hayward, and San Leandro areas.

We filed 415 tax returns.

The average adjusted gross income of clients at this site was 35,000.

For filing status, we had head of household 90, married filing jointly 40, and single 284.

This site supported a wide range of age groups.

17% were 25 to 34 years old, followed closely by 15% in the 55 to 64 age range, and 14% each in the 35 to 44 and 65 to 84 brackets.

84% of our filers spoke English as their primary language.

7% spoke Spanish, while 9% spoke other languages.

Next slide.

This slide shows the racial and ethnic makeup of clients across all sites.

Many tax filers identified as black or African American and Latinx or Hispanic, making these two groups the largest across all sites.

Tax filers who identified as Asian represented the third largest group of clients served.

Altogether, this data provides a clearer picture of who we served across age groups, language needs, and communities throughout the Alameda County.

Next I'm gonna head it back to Pamela.

Thank you.

So this year we expanded to two new sites in District 3 at the San Leandro Marina Community Center and the San Leandro Senior Community Center.

This increased our reach and accessibility to our seniors.

In terms of youth engagement, this tax season, we welcomed UC Berkeley students and high school students from Head Royce to volunteer at our Enterprise and Thomas L.

Berkeley Vita sites.

We were able to offer hands-on experience in tax preparation and provide opportunities for community service involvement.

In terms of growth and impact, we had a 16% increase compared to 2024.

We were also ranked second in the region for the highest number of tax returns completed.

So we partnered with the Independent Living Program or ILP to host three tax preparation events at their Hegenberger office, helping youth impacted by the foster care system learn how to file their taxes and claim eligible credits.

Next slide.

So as we reflected on this year, there were several key takeaways in terms of volunteer recruitment and retention.

We launched our efforts earlier, beginning last month, to allow sufficient time for outreach and onboarding.

We expand outreach to nearby community colleges, universities, and local community centers for retirees.

We incorporate volunteer incentives to the next year's planning, such as stipends and our gift cards and catered meals to support keeping the volunteers and recognized commitment.

In terms of training and orientation, we have a design, we have a designated tax law trainer who's a retired and nuitant, who's working on our training, working with our training and consulting team and developing training curriculum in ongoing e-learning materials.

And we also enhanced our orientation kickoff meeting to provide a comprehensive overview of volunteer expectations, program goals, and site logistics at the start of the season.

In terms of site operations, we are interested in exploring a year-round service model with clerical and staffing support to address amended returns, IRS letters, voicemail response and supply management, and also partnering with the CalWorks Public Service Training Trainee Program or CPSTP as a pilot, which is what we were gonna roll out this year.

We are also recommending that we implement a tablet-based check-in system to streamline the arrival process for both clients and volunteers to reduce administrative workload and improve data tracking and reporting.

And this year we are limited, we've limited our operations to three sites to improve efficiency and oversight.

We've also issued county logins for non-county volunteers, providing them access to the network and printing, and we've been partnering with our county ICD on this.

And we've also introduced a post-filing survey for clients to gather feedback on their experience and inform continuous improvement efforts.

So while the United Way Bay Area does have a survey, we wanted to also implement our own to get other information.

So in terms of next steps, right now we're waiting on the MOU with United Way Bay Area.

It is pending due to the government shutdown.

They don't know what their allocation is, and so our amount is not yet confirmed.

Um there will be a board letter forthcoming, and our volunteer orientation is scheduled to take place on January 24th, 2026.

And the program dates for this tax season will be January 29th through April 14th of 2026.

Next slide.

So we'd like to take a moment to acknowledge the Vita site coordinators and volunteers who efforts were essential to this the success of this year's program.

We truly appreciate their time, professionalism, and dedication to our communities.

So this is a list of the volunteers with the site coordinators at the top.

Next slide.

And this is a continuing list, and it also has the years of service for our return volunteers.

Next slide.

So at the end of each tax season, we host the celebration to recognize the contributions of site coordinators and volunteers and reflect on the program's impact.

With that, we'd like to share a short video highlighting this year's end of season celebration.

So again, we'd like to thank you for your time and continued support of this program.

We're happy to answer any questions or hear thoughts about VINAM moving forward.

Thank you so much for that update.

Thank you, Chair Tam, and thank you to both of you and all of the amazing volunteers and the rest of the staff for this great program.

It's truly a great resource.

So you mentioned that the program was second highest in terms of enrollment in the region.

Is that the Bay Area region, the nine counties?

I'm just curious to hear how we did relative to our neighbors.

The Bay Area Sonoma County is a lot of recent.

Okay, well, congratulations.

That's a huge accomplishment.

And then the recommendations say that we are going to consolidate into three sites.

Is that correct?

Yes.

Which sites will those be?

So we'll have Gale Still, Enterprise, and Thomas L.

Berkeley.

Okay.

And Thomas L.

Berkeley serves North County and the rest of the county.

The numbers were a little bit lower than Gale Steele, for example.

I'm curious if you have a sense of why that might be.

You know, is it related to foot traffic, transportation, parking?

I'm curious if there's something that my office can help do to boost participation at that particular site.

Yeah, so in the in the recent years, we've always heard it's been security as a concern.

And Gail Steele has always had the highest number of tax bowls over the years for some reason.

Okay, that's good to know historically.

I am also interested in hearing how we can potentially support getting more participation in this program.

So example, for example, is there outreach we could do at child care centers with first five?

If that's that's probably already happening, or with food distribution sites, what are the way our ways our offices can help?

Um the marketing materials and outreach materials from United Way Bay Area, just so that we can align our outreach materials with it, but we'll make sure that we send it to each of your offices as well, and then we're also gonna send it to other communities.

We're gonna send it to community-based organizations and um faith-based organizations as well.

Great, thank you.

And I'll just add we also have direct mailers to um clients that we serve throughout the agency.

That's perfect.

So folks who might be participating in Cal Fresh, for example, will get the information.

Yes, CalFresh Medical, foster care, um, CalWorks, General Assistance, they all get the flyer.

They will all get the one.

Well, we've um obviously been running this program a long time.

It's very successful.

How many years has it been running again?

It's about 23 24 years.

Great, thank you.

Thank you.

This is a very impressive program.

Appreciate all your hard work because uh, as you know, our our office is so plugged in.

Uh Celine, I saw her picture there, it was so anxious and always excited to volunteer.

Um, I understand the need to consolidate because I remember when we were looking at uh moving it from our old San Lorenzo office to the San Lorenzo Library, you needed uh lockers or locked because the files obviously contain uh private information, like people's social security numbers.

Um but in terms of uh the demographics, are you finding most of the usage to be around um the Oakland area or the Hayward area or is Hayward able to cover um some of the um clients that might be coming from San Lorenzo?

Yeah, so what what we're um what we're assuming is that the Gale Steel office in Hayward will um just absorb those clients that were going to San Leandro sites.

Okay, that's great.

Um so I wanted to uh just ask kind of like an interesting question.

I know the United Way is um helping to sponsor this, and you know, they're trying to figure out how their allocations gonna come forward from the federal government.

Have they ever been audited?

I mean, have our clients ever been audited with their returns.

I do recall in past years um a couple of clients were audited, um, no real findings, but a couple were audited.

So so who represents them when they get audited by the RS?

It's our volunteers.

Um the site coordinators and the uh transmitters.

But but it's but it's SSA staff.

Okay.

That's that's kind of a hefty responsibility.

It is a lot of confidence goes into the work they do.

Okay.

Thank you for that good work.

Um, do we have any public comments on this item?

There are no speakers.

Okay.

Thank you so much, appreciate it.

Okay, well, while Pamela and Marissa transition out.

I'm gonna welcome um Nicole Hayes and Jackie Pugh to the podium to provide an annual update on the in-home support services and public authority update.

I'm sorry, and Faith battles, Assistant Agency Director.

And while we wait for that presentation to be pulled up, I'm hearing that the public can't get through on Zoom.

Will the county clerk explain the status of participation by Zoom?

Are we having technical problems?

That's a problem, isn't it?

You need us to take a break to resolve this issue.

Okay.

We will take a five minute break.

We will resume.

May I have a real call, please?

Supervisor Fortune on the Bas.

Present.

Supervisor Tim.

Present.

So while we are getting the Zoom link to connect, we everyone can watch the presentations and we will just have comments, public comments on each items at the end, so that we can go through the presentations.

So thank you for your patience.

That's good.

Good afternoon, Vice President Tam and Supervisor Fortunata Boss.

My name is Nicole Hayes.

I'm the Division Director for In-Home Supportive Services and Public Authority.

And to my right.

Great afternoon.

I'm Jackie Pugh, one of three program managers for in-home support services.

All right.

So this afternoon agenda will cover an overview of the IHSS program.

We'll talk a little bit about recipient and provider data, give you some program updates, share a little bit about community for first choice option, which is also known as CIFCO, which includes case penalties and approaches.

And we'll cover the IHSS case level growth and staffing needs as well as looking ahead.

So our service areas.

We have our recipient side and our provider side.

So in-home support services, also known as IHSS, engages, serves, and support Medicaid recipients who are aged, blind, and disabled.

We authorize both domestic, which is help with cooking cleaning, laundry shopping, as well as personal care services.

Those include help with ambulation, bathing, dressing.

We offer their services to our recipients with the assistance of a pay provider.

We enroll qualified individuals to become paid providers and offer ongoing program support.

And we strive to deliver timely and high quality services appropriate to the needs of our recipients.

On the other side of the house, we have the public authority for IHSS, which we also refer to as PA, and it's committed to promoting the independence of recipients, the supporting quality care services by recruiting skilled individuals to become IHSS providers, and we match those providers with recipients based on their needs.

We offer training to both recipients and providers.

We administer the health plan for eligible providers.

We support, or PA supports the work of community focused adversary advisory committee, and serves as an employer of record for collective bargaining purposes.

Next slide.

We have 31% adult, 7% minor, and 62% of the majority of our recipients are seniors.

The majority of our recipients are female, which is 59%, and we have 41% male.

The top 10 cities are Oakland, which is 41%, the majority of our recipients reside in Oakland, followed by Hayward with 12%, Fremont with 10%, San Leandro, 9%, Union City Berkeley in Alameda, 4%, and Newark, Livermore, and Dublin 2%.

Our top 10 ethnicities are black, which is 27% of our recipients, 22% is Chinese, Hispanic is 12%, white is 11%, we have Asian Indian 5%, Vietnamese Asian or Pacific Islander, as well as Filipino, 4%, and Cambodian, 1%.

The top spoken languages, most of our recipients speak English, which is 55%, followed by Cantonese, which is 16%, 7% Spanish, 5% Mandarin, other non-English and Vietnamese, 4%, Farsi 3%, Tagalog, Cambodian and Korea, 1%.

So now I'll talk a little bit about the growth of our program.

So in-home support services has two parts.

We have our intake, and those intake is responsible for all of our incoming applications as well as intercounty transfers from other counties, and we current have currently have about 30 plus intake staff.

We also have district, which carries the bulk of our ongoing cases in managing help managers helping recipients when they have changes in their health care needs, as well as reassessing them every year.

We currently have 80 plus district staff.

So as you can see, our program has grown quite a bit.

We have our intake since 2020 has increased by 30%.

The average number of applications for July of this year was 752.

Now in November, we're averaging about 800 applications.

There's currently a delay with processing our applications timely due to the lack of our staff.

The average processing time frame for an application to be determined eligible for IHSS is close to five months.

There is a minimum 90-day delay before the case is assigned to a social worker.

It takes up to 45 days for the social worker to complete the in-home assessment.

And next month, November, we'll actually be assigning applications that were received in August.

In terms of the growth in recipients and providers.

Our recipients in January of 2020, we had 24,826 recipients.

That number has grown to 32,000 recipients now.

And as for providers in January 2020, we had about 26,000.

That number has grown to 37,000 providers as of September.

I do like, I would like to explain the difference between eligible active providers and those providers that are eligible.

So based on the stats we're seeing, it appears that we have more than enough providers to support our program recipients.

However, there's a difference between eligible and active providers.

Eligible providers are those who have met the provider enrollment requirements, while the active providers are those that are actually linked to recipients' cases and are actively providing services.

So next, I like to share about our provider demographics.

So as I mentioned before, the public authority, also known as PA for IHSS, manages the provider registry.

A provider must first meet IHSS provider enrollment requirements to be accepted on the PA registry.

In recent years, the PA has made a concentrated recruitment effort to grow the registry of available providers.

And they've done that through in-person tabling events, bus ads, as well as our quarterly community information session.

This data reflects those efforts as well as an increase in the number of enrolled providers.

The number of enrolled providers in the registry has increased 148% since January of 2020, and the number of referrals has remained steady with an average of 300 referrals.

In January of 2020, there were 889 active registry providers.

By September of 2025, the number of active registry providers increased to 2200.

Although we have a total of over 37,000 providers, we only have 31 active, which means we only have 31 of that number that are actively working and linked to recipient cases.

So now I'd share a little bit about our program updates, and I'll start with the telehealth reassessment option for eligible IHSS recipients, which we refer to as TRO.

On May 21st, 2024, the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services updated the Medicaid state plan amendments in accordance with established federal requirements to provide authority for a permanent telehealth reassessment option, which allows the IHSS program to conduct reassessments via telephone and video to eligible recipients who opt in.

To be eligible for telehealth reassessment option, a recipient must have stable care needs and must have had a received an in-person initial assessment and at least one in-person reassessment.

Recipients also must be able to independently utilize the technology needed to access the telehealth reassessment option andor may be assisted by an authorized representative to successfully participate.

So stable care needs would consist of a person being 19 years or older, no incidents of adult protective services, no incidents regarding health and safety, including suspicion of fraud, no hospital hospitalizations or care facility for 24 hours or more, no gap in provider services for six months, no change in residence, lives alone with without cognitive impairments, or lives with others if assistance is needed for memory orientation and judgment, and also AR does not direct all care.

They also have to have no protective supervision and no complex paramedical needs.

The in-person assessment must be conducted at least every other year to ensure the health and safety of recipients.

All counties must implement the telehealth reassessment options 60 days after the completion of system supports, which is the end of July or was the end of July, resulting in an effective date of October 2025.

Counties were granted the option to implement prior to the system updates, and Alameda County was one of two to implement an early pilot project.

As of today, there are approximately 40% of our cases that are potentially eligible for telehealth option.

We'll look forward to updating your board in the coming fiscal year on the success rates of telehealth option for the community members and staff.

So the next update is CDSS e-forms.

And in response to counties' requests for electronic forms, the CDSS, the California Department of Social Services, as well as the CWDA, California Welfare Directors Association, counties and public authorities work together to develop a solution to improve communications between county staff, recipients, and providers.

As a result, the CDSS has established the statewide implementation of electronic forms and electronic signatures for IHSS program forms.

Effective July 1st, 2020, counties will be required to implement e-forms for both IHSS recipients and IHSS providers.

The goal is to ultimately streamline efficiency and reduce workload.

Alameda County will implement in advance of the required deadline as part of its integration with telehealth reassessments and transition from the current EDOX functionality, which was designed internally, to the state's electronic forms.

District social workers receive training August and September of this year, and our intake will receive training in February of 2026.

Next is the provider sick leave.

Senate Bill 3 established that all IHSS providers, both existing and newly hired after July 1st, 2018, will start to accrue eight hours of sick leave after working and accumulated 100 paid hours for one or more IHSS recipients.

Under Senate Bill 616, current IHSS providers received a maximum paid leave of 24 hours through June 30th, 2024, and then earned an increased paid sick leave of 40 hours starting July 1st, 2024.

Sick leave balances expire June 30th of each year.

New paid sick leave of 40 hours start July 1st each year.

Next program update is the SEIU 2015 MOU, which was ratified.

The MOU was approved by the Board of Supervisors.

Highlights of the MOU are the hourly wage rate will increase from $20 to $21.20 cents effective December of this year.

Additional increases will be 50 more cent effective July 1st, 2026, and an additional 42 cent effective July 1st, 2027.

Health benefits eligibility remains the same, which is a provider has to work 80 pay hours each month.

The medical dental envisioned HMO $50, and the medical vision and dental PPO is 45.

Actually, I stand corrected.

The HMO is 20.

PPE will continue to be provided for all providers, and professional development trainings will continue to be offered with the input from SEIU 2015.

And now I'll pass it to Nicole to start with the Quality Improvement Action Plan.

Before I dive into the quality improvement action plan and move forward with the rest of the presentation, I would like to provide a tidbit of context as we proceed.

So IHSS is a heavily regulated program.

We're required to process our applications in a timely manner as well as conduct our annual reassessments.

As Jackie mentioned, for intake specifically, when we receive an application, we have up to 45 days to process that application because we may be waiting for a form.

However, we have to make a determination for eligibility within 30 days.

So that means even while we're waiting for a form, we still have to make that determination.

So the social worker, the case needs to be assigned to that social worker immediately so they can go ahead and reach out to the applicant and coordinate a time to conduct an in-home assessment.

Once that assessment is done and that person is determined eligible for IHSS, then the case is transferred to district, as Jackie mentioned, where ongoing case maintenance is underway is going.

An annual reassessment is required every 12 months.

The assessment requires the social worker to actually go into the home and interview the applicant or recipient.

In order for them to determine eligibility, they must understand their physical and mental condition.

They also want to inquire about what specific tasks or activities of daily living they're able to perform independently or with assistance.

The social worker is also required to assess the entire layout of the home for potential safety risks.

Along with in that assessment, they're going over the program, providing an overview, they're going over specific forms, and once they get that information, because in that assessment alone, that takes one to two hours just for them to conduct that interview process.

And then there's another hour or so where they're now taking all that information they gathered from that assessment in the home and transferring that information to our system, putting all their notes, all their narrative in there and calculating the number of hours that we're going to authorize this individual so that they can receive services, hire provider, go through the whole process.

In addition to the social worker, because they don't just handle assessments in the home, they're managing caseloads, so they have other responsibilities, such as phone calls, they manage several phone calls.

The most the major phone call inquiries that they receive are from other recipients inquiring about an increase in hours.

There's a change in medical condition, they've just been discharged from the hospital, so now they need more hours.

If the social workers are able to do an assessment over the phone and increase those hours, they will, but if it's something that does require the social worker to visibly see them, then they'll schedule another reassessment to go to that home.

In addition to that, they receive calls about just various referrals, they may need durable medical equipment, a wheelchair, shower bars, etc.

So the social workers handle several tasks other than their primary, which is out in the field.

Our social workers are assigned approximately 30 cases per month.

They're out in the community pretty much every day, if not every day, serving the Alameda County residents.

Most of our clients are in Oakland.

However, we have clients throughout Alameda County.

There is no specific location, geographic location to our social workers.

So our social workers could be out handling anywhere from Albany all the way to Livermore.

During the pandemic, as we all were impacted, we lost staff, and so it was it was impossible for us to stay on top of processing these applications and reassessments timely.

At that same time, we had a backlog of applications going back as far as six months, and that's six months before it was even assigned to a social worker, and then as Jackie mentioned, then there's another 45 days once it's assigned.

So we're looking at eight, nine months before an individual is even receiving their benefits.

And then as far as our reassessments, we didn't have the staff capacity to manage those overdue reassessments.

So we had at that time several thousand that had just been sitting and waiting.

Shortly after Governor Newsom officially declared the end of the state emergency, a few months later, the California Department of Social Services placed us on a quality improvement action plan, a QIAP for our untimely processing of applications and reassessments.

For the past two years, we have been required to submit a quarterly report outlining in detail how and when we're going to get into compliance.

In addition to this report, we meet with the state through teams meetings every quarter to discuss our progress and to discuss the efforts we have made.

During these two years, CDSS has been very critical, but they've also provided valuable feedback and constructive recommendations that have helped us peel the layers back on our internal processes and refine some of our business processes so that we can work as efficiently as we can with the resources that we have available.

In addition to policy changes and consulting with SCIU 1021 that represents our social workers and our clerical staff, because they also have assisted.

We also made efforts such as shifting staff, offering overtime, consulting with other comparable counties just to get an idea of some of their best practices that could help us.

And we've also conducted outreach efforts internally to improve the efficiency of our processes.

And although we have taken steps to improve operations and continue to look at ways that we can improve our process, progress has been gradual.

Staff retention continues to be a challenge.

We remain on a QIAP with no projected timeline for completion.

While under this QIAP, under the direction of CDSS, we prioritize and assign the oldest applications and the oldest reassessments every month.

Until recent changes, we shifted our priority.

Next slide, please.

That leads me to the conversation about community first choice options, commonly known as CIFCO, as Jackie mentioned.

So the CIFCO cases, these are recipients who are considered to be the most vulnerable in the IGSS program.

These are individuals who require care at the level as if they were in a nursing facility or nursing hall.

And for that reason, the federal government gave the state an additional 6% as their federal participation to ensure that we process the reassessments for these specific individuals.

We have 32,000 recipients, as Jackie mentioned.

More than half of our clients are CIFCO recipients, 56%.

And out of that 56%, 21% of the cases are overdue.

In the past, any county that had that had overdue CIFCO reassessments or cases, the state covered those costs.

They've been covering going all the way back to 2017, and they reported they've been paying 80 million dollars per year.

Effective this fiscal year, July 1st, 2025, CIFCO penalties are now going to be shared with the county and the state.

We have to share effective July 1st, 2026, counties will be 100% responsible for CIFCO penalty costs.

So if you take a look at the chart, the state has already provided us with a monthly invoice showing exactly what our share would be.

So when you look at July, because that's when it first started, penalties are based on the wages that were paid to our providers that are in overdue status.

So for July, over $13 million was paid to providers.

13,375,000.

At that time, we had 3,800 overdue CIF CO cases.

So the penalty amount, because now the federal government wants that 6% that they paid, it comes out to 802,534.

And when we split that cost with CDSS, our share is the 401,267.

The recipients and the providers are not even aware of this.

They still get paid their wages.

This is more on the back end, and that's when the calculations are done.

As you can see, the numbers, they declined a bit in September, but overall, we're looking at just for this quarter alone, these three months, the county share is one almost 1.2 million dollars.

What are the steps we've been taking ever since?

The prior priority has been CIFCO.

Well, when we're doing case assignments, we're assigning CIFCO cases only.

Keep in mind we're focused on CIFCO because of the penalty, but we have several other cases that are non-CIFCO that we have not been able to see in the last few years as well.

But because there's a penalty involved, we have prioritized all of the CIFCO cases.

Now, if we have someone that's considered non-CIFCO and they call because they need assistance of medical condition, we will go ahead and assign them and schedule them.

But for the most part, those cases are just to the wayside and we're focused on CIFCO.

Telehealth reassessments, Jackie spoke to that, that started is fairly new.

We were hoping to get more interest because during COVID, we were able to manage because we were able to do a lot of telehealth reassessments.

It cut down on the travel time for our social workers as well as they were able to process more reassessments because they were at home or whatnot and able to conduct their business over the phone.

Right now we're making efforts, we're reaching out to the recipients to you know peak their interest, those that are eligible.

Again, it just started, and so we'll be able to provide more updates, but we are pushing for more telehealth.

Case actions, we've had to be more intentional with taking adverse action on our cases.

We deal with a very vulnerable population in the past.

We send notices, we don't get a response, we send another notice, we're calling, and because again, the population that we serve, we would kind of delay the process from terminating folks.

The most common is missed appointments.

Our social workers schedule appointments, they go, they attempt to confirm the appointment, they go to the home, the recipient is not there or unavailable or wants to reschedule, and so our social workers continue to push those cases back month after month after month.

We're taking a more intentional approach, as I stated, we're going to schedule the appointment.

If the recipient for whatever reason misses it, we'll send them a notice saying you need to reschedule immediately.

And if we don't hear back from them, we will terminate the case.

We will not rescind the case until we are actually able to go to the home and conduct an assessment.

We took that process from Los Angeles County, who has actually been doing well, and that's one of the practices that they've shown.

And so we'll see if that's more effective.

We also did mass billings to our recipients who we notice have not had an active provider in years.

This is a safety net program.

However, we have quite a few recipients out there who are not utilizing the program for whatever reason.

They may have a provider that's voluntarily doing the work.

And if so, we still need to know that.

But for the most part, we don't see any type of linkage as far as a provider is assisting them with their with their services.

Recipient can hire anyone they want, a friend, a family member, a church member.

If they can't find anybody, then we have the public authority registry where we have folks that we can match them to.

A mass mailing went out, they had uh up to 60 days to either find a provider or withdraw from the from the program.

We got a pretty positive outcome, which you may have noticed on the chart.

I believe that contributed to the increase in July and August with the providers, where you see that increase with provider enrollment as well as provider referrals.

Another thing that's not on there, I'd like to mention is that we have a monthly report because these are Medi-Cal recipients.

We get a report that shows when we have recipients that are deceased, maybe moved out of the state or in a skilled nursing facility or long-term care facility.

And with that information, we go ahead and we're able to terminate the case.

By taking all of these actions, we did see a slight peak in August as far as terminations, but now it's kind of just been normal moving forward.

And as far as our staffing, we recently hired nine social workers.

We have an existing social worker one list.

We hired nine social workers.

This is their third week.

They just started, so they're going through the training process, and they'll get on the job training, and then in a few months, they'll eventually get you know cases and a full caseload.

Next slide.

Thank you.

We still have several vacancies, but no vacant-funded positions.

And so this leads me to the next topic.

So we can talk about caseload growth and staffing needs.

The total cases have grown 31% since 2019, and field positions have shrunk by 22%, thereby increasing the caseload for each social worker by 68%.

If you take a look at the chart, you'll see blue represents the total number of recipients.

The green represents the caseload, the number of cases assigned to a social worker, and the orange represents the field positions, the number of social workers we actually have that are working in positions.

In 2019, we had approximately 25,000 cases, 25,000 recipients.

We had 115 social workers, and at that time, our social workers were maintaining 325 cases, which is manageable.

Fast forward six years later, today we have over 32,000 cases.

We have 90 social workers, and our social workers are managing close to 600 cases.

Historically, we have always had a challenge with backfilling our positions with filling our vacancies.

Every time we go to interview, we're always backfilling, backfilling, backfilling.

We've never had an opportunity to request new positions because we've always been focused on the backfit on the backfilling due to retention, retirements, resignations, promotions, which we definitely encourage, but that has kind of been the way in IHSS.

Prior to the pandemic, we were doing a lot of backfilling, but we were able to manage.

We were able to maintain where we stayed off CDSS's radar.

We were in compliance.

And then once the pandemic hit and we lost most of the staff, we have struggled and we've continued to struggle up until now.

Ideally, in order for us to really manage the caseloads that we have, the 32,000 cases, which continue to grow three to four percent every year, we need 60 more social workers.

Realistically, we will be able to fill those positions, not with our history of constantly backfilling.

However, we still do need staff.

I've shared a little bit about some of the duties that the social worker handles on their day-to-day.

Yes, we're looking at new ways of maybe pulling some of those ancillary tasks so they can focus more on in the field, automation.

We've reached out to other counties, as I mentioned.

Some of these counties like Los Angeles and Riverside, they have call centers set up that are managed by social workers who handle bulk of the calls that the social workers receive throughout the day.

And by them handling those calls, it allows our field social workers to just focus on doing assessments and reassessments.

That's something that's more long-term.

We also had a conversation with another county, it might have been butte, although they're a very small county, but they have a case-banked system where they have banked all the current cases that don't require assessments.

Those are banked, and then they have a social worker of the day that kind of manages those calls.

And again, it allows the field social workers to just be out in the community and focus on those.

Those are a few examples, those again are long-term goals.

At the end of the day, the reality is even though we can assign those tasks or create automation or different tools to help the social worker, we still need bodies.

We still need social workers to go into the home.

I gave you an overview of the interview that they have to conduct when they're in the homes.

It's not simple where you can just check boxes when you're in there.

The social workers are going into these home environments, dealing with behavioral situations, and so yeah, they're trying to get the information.

So social workers need to be in the homes and we need more.

If the focus is just on CIFCO and trying to get out of this fiscal penalties situation that we're dealing with, we need to at least be at where we were in 2019 when we had 115 social workers at least.

And if the focus is just on CIFCO and still putting aside the other non-CIFCO cases that we haven't seen in a few years and putting the application process on hold where we continue to have backlog, that's fine, but we still need more social workers.

Thank you.

Oh, one more thing, I'm sorry.

In 2024 and last year, and also in 2025, we hired 38 social workers.

In that same time frame, 2024 and this year, we lost 23 due to resignation, retirement, and promotions.

Again, we encourage that, but we have not had a net gain.

We're not alone.

I have conversations with other counties.

Everyone is struggling with the staffing shortages, especially of qualified social workers, particularly in this field, the aging field.

Burnout, high caseloads, morale, these are all things that have led to high turnovers.

Thank you.

Next one.

All right, and so on.

No, we provided all the current program updates.

Now I just want to give you just an update on what's ahead.

So for the MOU between the Medi-Cal Medicare programs, managed care plans.

This is part of the Cal Ames initiative.

So our particular managed care plans, Alameda Alliance and Kaiser, we are working with them to develop an MOU so we can strengthen our coordination so that focus, there's more person care focus on the recipient.

We already have informal conversations and relationships with our managed care plans when it comes to IHSS.

They assist with applications, they assist with, you know, finding providers, they consult with our social workers often to assist with getting medical equipment or anything that they may need.

But now this is a more formal process, and the responsibility is being placed more on the managed care plans to ensure when that recipient leaves the hospital or whatnot that you have dotted your I's and crossed all your T's.

You've made sure that this recipient has everything they need, including IHSS, including a provider, including equipment, all of those things.

So we have had conversations this year with the two managed care plans.

We're in the progress of or scar me in the process of finalizing the MOU.

There is one outstanding item, which is the data sharing, and that's something that affects all the counties.

We're just still unclear on what that dating data sharing looks like.

The Department of Healthcare Services have reported that they already provide data.

So it's just about finding out what exactly do they need and do we need to add more data or not.

California Welfare Directors Association, they have been the liaison during this whole process for the counties for the managed care plans for CDSS and DHCS, DHCS.

This was supposed to go into place last year, January 1st, 2024.

The process is taking long, but we are resuming our conversations with our county managed health care plans and hope to have that up and running in 2026.

The next one is statewide collective bargaining.

Again, as public authority, we are considered the employer of record when it comes to negotiating for our IHSS providers, the wages and benefits.

This proposal is to move those responsibilities from counties and now make it more negotiations on the state level.

There's even talk about or making it regional.

This proposal has come up several years and it has been shut down in the past, but it seems now there's some traction, and this proposal is moving forward.

$3.3 million has been invested into this collective bargaining.

There'll be an advisory committee, and January 1st, 2027, this committee will present something to legislature, basically talking about the transition process.

I don't have much information other than it's a concern for all of us, all counties, as far as what this will look like, wages is a concern.

We are currently Alameda County, the top five, one of in the top five as far as wages in the Bay Area, and we may even be statewide, but don't hold me to that, but we're definitely in the top 10.

So that's a concern.

We pay more than Los Angeles County.

So when you talk about elevating something to the state level, what will look what will that look like for some of the other counties?

So more to come on that.

Something will be presented to legislative January 1st, 2027, as I stated, but it also states that there should not be any implementation of this bargaining no sooner than January 1st, 2030.

So a lot of discussion about that.

And lastly, as far as potential impacts of the Medi-Cal policy changes, last month our colleagues provided a great detailed explanation on all the impacts that met these Medicaid changes will have on Medi-Cal recipients.

I'm bringing it up here because again, our IHSS recipients are Medi-Cal recipients.

They cannot get IHSS without Medi-Cal.

So we too are looking and monitoring to see the impacts it will have.

So when there are talk about changes to, you know, the freeze on undocumented uh immigrants and uh having a Medi-Cal premium and changing the eligibility determination from 12 months to six months, this will also impact us as well.

So we'll continue to monitor and provide an update at the next presentation.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Not exactly great news, but we need the reality check.

Supervisor Fortune out of asked questions, comments.

Thank you for the very thorough report of a critical program.

I do have a few questions.

Uh, just a very basic question with the average caseload growing 71% from 314 to 538.

Um, can you just help me understand what that means?

Is that everything from you know all of the intake to the service provision and the visits?

Which slide are you looking at?

I'm sorry, I'm trying to follow.

It is slide number five.

The bottom left.

Okay, I'll speak a little bit about that.

So the average caseload has increased quite a bit, and this is what Nicole was saying about how in about 2019, the average case load for a social worker was about 350 cases.

So that means that technically, if you kind of do some quick math and you divide that by 12, they're able to see all those people on their caseload that year without it them not being able to see a lot of people.

As caseloads and growth grow and then the pool of social workers decreases, a lot of people are not able to be seen.

Um, so if right now the average caseload is about 600, many recipients are not able to be seen.

The focus, of course, is those CIF co-recipients, but there's also thousands of other funding source cases that they have not had reassessments in years.

In addition to that, the load of the social worker is a little bit heavier because not only are they trying to see all the recipients that they were assigned for that current month, they are also receiving a high number of calls.

So if before they were only seeing receiving calls for a caseload of 300, now that's double.

So it's hard for them to manage seeing all their recipients, completing the reassessments, as well as taking all of these calls, and they seem to be coming in quite frequently.

And so they have a responsibility to call those people back within 24 hours, in addition to all their other uh all the other tasks that are managing.

Okay, that um certainly is um very eye-opening.

In terms of the CIFCO, uh CFCO, it looks like part of the um solution here is really about staffing, right?

And so there's the slide on page eight, and then the slide on page nine.

Can you help me understand um what vacancies we have?

And if all our vacancies were were filled, where would we be?

So for the CIFCO, um, let me just preface with this, Supervisor Fortunata Boss.

So our social workers, they're working hard, um, working on cases.

We're about three months behind.

So, like for example, this month, October, they're working on June and July.

They haven't had an opportunity to work on any of the October that are due this month, which is about eleven hundred.

So, although our social workers are chipping away processing 14 to 1500 reassessments every month.

Here comes another 1100, here comes another 1,200.

And so that's the challenge that we faced as far as we're never going to get ahead with this type with the staffing that we have now.

So, ideally, if we had all of those positions filled, my wish list of 60 more staff that would um eliminate the high caseloads for social workers, they'd be at a manageable uh caseload of 325, 350.

That number would also help with our applications, our intake, getting that backlog down.

We need another unit alone in intake just to help cover the backlog of applications that we receive every month.

For CIFCO specifically, if we want to get ahead of the penalties, if we can get that staff just to, we can just focus on CIFCO, but we definitely need multiple social workers in order to do that because at the capacity and the example I just gave you, they're working hard, but it's not it's not enough because we keep continuing to add more every month.

Did I answer your question?

Um, yes, you answered it partially.

I guess I'm trying to understand where at the bottom of page nine it says no funded positions.

Oh.

You know, what what are the vacant funded positions and where would we be if all of those were filled?

And then it sounds like there may be additional positions that are needed that are not funded.

Is that correct?

Yes, thank you, Supervisor Fortunatabas.

We have positions, not enough according to our estimation in general, with how many we need, but of the positions that we have available, the majority of them are not necessarily funded.

So we have vacant positions, but they're not funded.

And when we are able to hire, we are hiring within the funded positions.

Um we have had occasion with um director forward's permission to hire some positions that are not funded, but to hire all of these positions unfunded is problematic for the department and the um program itself.

I see.

And I think you asked, what are the positions?

Was that the second part of your question, supervisor?

That might be helpful too, I understand as well.

Are they all social worker positions?

Social worker ones, twos, and threes.

Yes, these are all social worker positions.

And accompanying those need to be social work supervisors.

The more social workers you hire, the more supervisors you need to support the social workers.

We try to keep them at seven social workers within a unit to have more than that, and they all have 300, 600 cases is very difficult for the social work supervisors.

We can get the specifics though, with the number for social workers one, two, three, and the supervisors.

And I should note we went to ones because social worker ones, we wanted to broaden the field of folks that would be interested in working for the county.

We were struggling to give social worker twos, so we added social worker ones, and we have had success hiring individuals at the social worker one classification.

They have less experience and they're on probation for a much longer amount of time, but that's been really helpful for us over the years.

And Faith, can all the social workers do the same work?

All the social workers can do the same work, and the way that it's set up in our department is we separate them.

So we have social workers that do intake.

That's what Jackie and Nicole were talking about, taking the applications, processing them the quick turnaround.

Then we have the majority of our social workers are in district.

They are the ones that are responsible for seeing these cases ongoing once a year and answering any questions that may pop up during the year.

So for clarification, um, social worker one, two, and three.

Oh, I'm sorry, yes, social worker one, two, and three can all do the same work.

Okay, um, all of this is really helpful.

Maybe um a few questions that might be um a little on a different track from filling the social worker positions to deal with the caseload and the backlog on the one of the last slides that looks ahead.

Um, statewide collective bargaining.

Is that the uh the bill that's sponsored by Matt Haney?

Is that what that refers to?

Yes, and thank you.

And can you remind me what the status of that is?

This is where we're at right now, as far as the 3.3 million, it's set up to have an advisory committee.

It's going to include the two unions, SCIU and UDW.

Of course, C DSS finance, it's gonna be a uh a lot of groups, and they're working on developing something to present to the legislature on if this did move forward.

What would that transition look like?

That's currently where we are, and again, they have to submit this by January 1st, 2027.

Thank you.

And then um, one of my final questions.

So there was also a report from the commission on the future of healthcare a couple years ago.

How much does that um relate to in-home uh health care?

I'm not familiar with the details of that report.

I don't know if Nicole is um that.

But ultimately, the the biggest issue for IHSS throughout the state to try to get to an answer for you, supervisor for Tenata Bas is there are more people that are aging and they're not necessarily aging healthy.

And IHSS is intended to keep those individuals in their home as much as possible.

And the fast clip with which people are eligible for IHSS, is very difficult for any county to keep track of.

When this governor made a decision to kind of expand the eligibility for IHS, meaning who could receive Medi-Cal, that added individuals also into the role for who would be eligible for Medical, and we can't turn those individuals away.

If they have full scope Medical, they are eligible.

So it, you know, ideally it's a holistic view where you would you know age as healthy as you can early on, and you wouldn't be dependent upon this thing as your life progresses.

So it's kind of more of a prevention is upstream as opposed to our IHSS program now being able to resolve that for individuals that haven't had that opportunity upstream.

Absolutely, yeah.

That upstream prevention is really the key to a lot of our challenges.

Um, I just asked because I was looking at it, and there is a there is a framework for healthy aging and care for older adults, and um, you know, things like increasing the supply diversity and distribution of qualified workers to meet the demand.

So I suppose these are more downstream, and I'm just thinking ahead to the next report on workforce development and if there's also a connection between this program and our workforce investment board to make sure we've got a workforce that is ready to care for our aging adults, and it's fine if you don't have a response.

I'm just trying to think holistically as well.

It's um it's quite a dilemma to really meet the need at this time.

I can certainly look up that report and be able to follow up with Director Ford for feedback for you.

To your point, attracting individuals into the field of aging and gerontology is a bit of a challenge.

The adult protective services world has had uh awakening to try to entice people to get an advanced degree and get pay them a stipend to be able to pay for their graduate studies and then come and work for a county.

The social workers in IHSS that hasn't been something that's been floated at the state.

It has been successful for APS, and I imagine that will be a conversation that's going to happen for social workers as well who don't have the same requirements as an adult protective services worker, but certainly the need is still the same.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Those are good questions.

Um just have a couple of follow-up on them.

Um, as it relates to the caseload and the staffing needs, um, on page nine, this slide that you have.

Can you clarify um the needs right now?

So you're saying that in order to meet the CIFCO compliance, you need 30 new social workers and four new supervisors, which you do not have now, right?

We do not have, so that's in addition to, yes.

The total caseload, you need a total of 150 social workers, uh, of which 60 are new and nine are supervisors?

Yes, so right now we have 90 social workers, and if we add an additional 60, we that would total the 150 social workers, and that's again if we realistically everybody was getting a lower caseload, everybody was able to manage things, yes.

You you said that uh obviously 600 cases is really unwieldy, and you ideally something that's like 300,000.

300, that's that has always been manageable, and other counties agree with me that if you can get into that 300 mark, that is realistic.

They're able to manage the caseload well.

Okay, so uh I'm glad you um explained sort of like the whole context because when we went through the uh the negotiations over the IAS with the providers with local 2015 uh SEIU 2015, um, we knew that we were in the top five when it comes to the providers, but are we in the top five in the Bay Area when it comes to the social workers too, terms of salaries?

Oh, as far as their salaries, I'm not sure.

I would have to do some research on that.

The reason I'm asking is first of all, uh if it's a count statewide issue when you're talking about Los Angeles County and ourselves, um, the the number of social workers, it sounds like you need to build the pipeline if there aren't enough coming into the system willing to work for counties.

That's a different issue than trying to get people or entice people through wages.

So, where do you think that issue is right now in terms of our ability to fill some of those vacancies and the staffing?

Based on the wages, is it a wage issue?

Is it a just a lack of personnel and qualificate qualified candidates statewide?

Um it's a combination.

Um, the work has become quite difficult.

Um, can you just imagine a social worker is out in the community every day, just going from house to house, different environments.

That that kind of wears a person down.

We have folks that have been in our program five, six years tops, and they're leaving, going for promotions, just going to other locations because just of the work.

They enjoy working with the clients, but that has been a challenge, just the constant travel and going from home to home and being in different environments.

What I also notice is after the pandemic when we were doing a lot of hiring, um, a lot of individuals declined a lot of our offers because they wanted to work from home.

Now, mind you, our position, our staff are mobile based.

They only need to do probation in the office for a few months, and then they're but that was a deal breaker for quite a few people.

If I can't work from home now, then I don't want it.

So the telecommuting, the mobile work came up, and also just some folks are interested in getting their MSW for the social worker classification, you don't necessarily need a master's.

So as Faith mentioned, the social worker one, which is entry level, you can have a bachelor's and no experience and you meet the qualifications.

That's why with Social Worker One, we start off with usually this last time with over 200 applications, but after it was screened for qualifications and there was a written exam, it dwindled down to 45, 46 people, and that's the challenge we face with the social worker one.

Social worker two is another one where you know either a bachelor's or years of caseload experience.

A lot of the folks that we that interview, they're looking, they have a they're pursuing an MSW, so they want hours, or this just isn't the field for them.

That's what I've experienced so far.

If I might add to what she's saying, I think also this is a the work that they see in the field with our older adults can be really really challenging.

I think it gets overwhelming to see older adults in such states, and I think that kind of wears on individuals.

In addition, the generations that are coming into the county employment now, they typically are not lifers.

I've been with the county for what 25 years, and a lot of staff are not 20 years, they're not staying that long.

Like Nicole mentioned, five, six, seven years, and they rotate out.

So counties have to be very nimble to plan for, it's almost like you have to overhire to plan for people that you know are going to transition out because they just don't stay as long.

And the carrot that Nicole mentioned about clinical licensing, which we are considering as an agency for individuals that come into this field is really a good incentive for individuals to come and work for the county, especially the social services agency.

They can be supported to get their clinical licensure and they can use that to supplement their income and do something that they really enjoy, which is providing therapy.

So it's a combination of a lot of it.

Okay, that's helpful to understand.

Um the other question I had is honestly, I'm not quite sure what the penalties are used for, the 1.2 million on CIFCO.

If you're not in compliance, you get penalized.

So what does the state do with the penalties?

What do they do with them?

Yeah.

So the money that they received from the federal government, that additional 6%, they have to pay it back.

So for counties that have overdue reassessments, the federal government is saying we want that money back.

So the state is so far, they've been paying it in advance or paying it on our behalf, but at some point I know it's still under discussion.

They may be coming to us to collect our share that we have to contribute.

I guess my question is more fundamental than that.

I understand that we have to pay them back and the state fronted it, but at the end of the day, if you're uh you want to be uh constructive in how you use the funds, paying it back is not constructive.

It's the federal government, is the state helping us try to get into compliance with these penalties and no, the state's feedback is you have to pay.

It's it's interesting because you have some counties, for example, that are 93% compliant.

That's a really good compliance rate.

But this rule is a hundred percent.

You could be 98% compliant, and you still will have to pay all of the penalty, which is counties are like that's that's kind of tough.

You know, you anything could happen as to why you're not complying.

You could have your best laid plans, and the a couple of cases you just can't get to.

If they had a provider and that provider was paid that month, then you are penalized for the entire amount of your IHSS provider payroll that month.

So the good news is counties are talking often about it.

We meet every month.

We're giving that feedback to CWDA, who was our best advocate.

We have C DSS that comes to monthly meetings with counties that hears this feedback and they're trying to figure out a way to hopefully negotiate to soften some of this.

I don't think there'll be the majority of the counties will be touched by the penalty at some point, especially if you ever had a backlog.

The backlog puts you in a difficult space because you're always playing catch up, and they didn't necessarily consider that when they made this requirement to help the state with this budget.

Okay, sounds like you're doing everything you can to try to change this requirement.

I appreciate that.

We're trying to so when you talked about like um uh the number of cases, I I I guess I'm not I didn't hear the answer completely.

Are you thinking that if you had 150 social workers, you would be at a at that level where you get 300 cases per social workers?

We'd be in a good space, yes.

Not only for the district side that handles the caseloads, manage the caseloads, but also looking at our intake staff because they also need help, yes.

Okay, and then uh I know within the agencies, there's several categories that have social workers on two and three and so uh we have the most.

You have the most, and they do a different function in other places.

Yes, our social workers do different things than other departments that have social workers.

I'm gonna let her finish the question though.

I'm sorry.

I want you to finish the question.

Uh yeah, what I I'm trying to understand is um what can we do about like the burnout issue, right?

Because um if you stay in a job too long, and given the Gen X or Gen Z's and it's probably five years on average now or less.

I'm an ex, we stay.

I'm sorry, we stayed generation X, we stay.

Oh, you're Gen.

Okay, you're Gen X.

What's after Gen Z now?

Alpha something?

Millennials, don't forget the millennials.

Oh millennials are in there too.

It's a group after millennials, Andrea's saying.

So maybe that's Z is after millennials, yeah.

Millennials, then Zs and then Alphas.

Okay.

Got to keep up with the times, right?

Gen Z then Alpha.

Uh so uh what so you're saying we have to overhire to compensate for this um attrition rate, right?

So what can you do to at least get at this problem in Alameda County?

So, as I mentioned, we're looking at other um ways that we can take some of those tasks away with automation.

I gave the example with the call centers in LA because the phone calls are part of the issue.

You have staff that are out here trying to do visits, but they're also trying to return calls.

So trying to come up with a plan to take some of those tasks away from the social workers will help where we can have them just focus on field visits because they're extremely overwhelmed right now.

And although we continue to provide them with updates, and you know, as far as staffing and things of that nature, um, many of them are kind of at their breaking point.

They've expressed that to me.

They've stayed in long enough.

So just being able to relieve them of some of those duties.

So to add to what Nicole is saying, and Director Ford has been talking to me about this consistently, the the cure for what happens in IHSS is not just to hire all the staff because those caseloads grow every year, three to four percent.

So it's hiring, it's also reimagining how we do our work, and we've had great conversations about how we can do that, but we can't afford to take staff that currently are serving those cases, bring them in the office to do these reimaginings.

We need to hire and able to create these pilots where you have a group of social workers that are on the call center and they can mediate a lot of those calls that the social workers that are actually carrying the cases do.

Currently, that work is done by a different classification.

That will require some discussion with labor, but if that's something that can lower the caseload, because that's ultimately the biggest issue, the burnout is connected to the caseload.

So how do we bring the caseload down?

If we push to the side and have people that just take those phone calls, we've talked about geographical assignments.

If we can have staff that can go to certain places in the county, but staff may only want to go to certain places in the county, which makes it very difficult for us to even envision something like that.

We have a lot of best practices we can get to, but we need to have a bit of a leeway with adding staff to the department in this program so we can try these pilot projects with consultation with SCIU 1021 to see how effective they would be.

Okay, we definitely should have those conversations.

So when you talked about technology, you're also in factoring in like AI potentially.

Okay.

Thank you so much for that update.

Um that's all the questions I had.

Like some are we at a point where we can take public comment or do we have to still wait till the end?

I see a hand raised.

Oh, I'm sorry.

There's no speakers.

They lowered their hand.

There's no public comment on this item.

Oh, okay, she is.

We have one speaker.

Could you come up here?

Oh, Chair Tam, I do have one final comment.

I can do it after the public speaker.

Okay.

I don't look at the protocol.

What's the protocol?

Introduce myself or no, but feel free to speak for two minutes.

Okay.

Two minutes.

And then we can uh fill the there's a form that uh speakers fill in, but you can do that afterwards.

Got it.

Um Kara Williams, Social Services Chapter President for SCIU will be speaking on Wednesday.

So, and then thank you for your meeting on Thursday.

Um, I wasn't gonna comment, but I do want to reiterate for the two of you in the sentiments of what's shared by management.

I want to say I can appreciate the relationship that we have with this management team.

Um they are very correct and we try to work collectively to resolve the issues.

Um, but what I clearly need you all to hear is case loads are an issue.

Case loads are an issue, burnout is an issue.

Everything they have mentioned around licensing, um, more staff, being competitive with other counties, thinking out of the box is hugely important.

There are devils in the details in those things.

Um, the timing is couldn't be any more extraordinaire for us because as the both of you guys know, we are in bargaining, and I need to elevate that this is of high importance.

Not only our child welfare situation, which which our meeting is focused on, but every single department has these ancillary issues, and they're not very ancillary, they're very impactful to the county, and all eyes are on the board as to what and how we can resolve it.

Um, some things at the board level that have been brought to is the time that it takes to apply for a job in Alameda County.

We are losing people with that time frame.

It takes entirely too long to get hired, and that needs to be addressed in regards to IHSS, and this isn't um, and we've had roundabout conversations, but one of the issues um is there is no, and I have held off IHSS workers for probably as long as I can around caseload standards, but because they don't understand where we're sorry, real quick, they don't understand where relief is coming.

They want to hear about caseload standards.

The equivalent of when I reach that 300, once I reach 300, where's the overtime?

Where's the premium pay?

Um, so I think those are things that we all really need to collectively consider um further.

Thank you.

Thank you.

There are no other speakers.

Sorry, uh Supervisor Fortunately.

Thank you.

Um I was just thinking about the work session we had last week and the presentation uh from our HR director regarding how we're making improvements in hiring, and one of the things I don't think that we um were able to really talk about is looking at the vacant vacancy rates across key departments, especially departments that really serve our vulnerable communities.

So obviously our aging population, children.

So I would be really interested in having a conversation that looks at vacancies and key departments and divisions, and what the strategy can be to really focus HR on that hiring as well as um retention.

So I don't know how often that is done, but it definitely seems like with some of the departments under SSA that there's a real need to really focus on um human resources.

Thank you.

Thank you.

And if I might before we conclude for this, I want to take an opportunity to appreciate the staff and IHSS.

It's a huge program, and we know they're doing a lot with less.

I want them to know that we see them.

I'm really excited to hear all of your questions and your curiousness about it.

That's helpful to them as they understand it.

They hear their labor, talking the same information to them and making sure they know that we appreciate the work they're doing on behalf of the older adults, and we're grateful that they're still with us in this process from the top to the bottom.

Well said, Thank you so much.

Okay.

Okay, before we move on to the next item, I'd like to make an announcement for those of you who are um not able to join join the meeting through Zoom but wish to provide public comment.

Please call in to the meeting.

Um, dial 877-853-5257.

Again, that number is 877-853-5257.

Um, and then the meeting ID that you'll be entering is 848-4291-0941, and the pound sign.

Um these instructions will be provided on our website as well as the teleconferencing guidelines.

Um, once you are able to call in, you'll again dial star nine to raise your hand to speak.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Appreciate that.

Um, let's go to the next item on workforce development.

Thank you, Supervisor Tam.

We have with us, I'm sorry, she just told me she was thirsty.

Um Rhonda Boykin, the workforce development board director and the assistant director, um, Latoya Reed and Jay.

And we'll start with Rhonda.

Thank you, Director Ford.

Um, and thank you, Supervisor Tim and Supervisor Fordinato Bass for this opportunity to present you updates on the workforce development board's uh workforce system and programs and initiatives.

I believe at our last presentation over it's probably been a year ago.

Uh La Toya was in the interim assistant director role, and so I'm happy to announce that um she's been uh appointed uh permanent as the assistant director in effective May of this year, and she's been doing a phenomenal job.

Congratulations.

And her prior management analyst role has been filled by Carl Pascal, sitting there in the audience.

He started about two weeks ago, and we are thrilled to have him uh join our team.

Um Carl has uh worked in both the county uh prior and social services agency as well as with uh behavioral health care, and he has led community collaborations to design and manage innovative programs serving the most vulnerable residents of Alameda County.

Carl will be presenting with me at future social services committee meetings and after day after today is the official baton pass from LaToya to Carl.

So I'm just congratulations to Charles to Carl and his appointment to the Workforce Development Board.

Welcome.

So today we'll provide an overview and cover our workforce system and share highlights on our new service delivery model.

We'll also focus on our We OA performance for program year July 1st, 2024 through June 30th, 2025.

We have some really exciting news about SB617 that was recently signed by Governor Newsom.

We'll also highlight our layoff data that's reported through the Warren Notice.

We also will provide updates on our key programs on the American Rescue Plan Act, our step forward, our student training employment program, metrics learning and EMS Core, and our marine trades program, and the Department of Rehabilitation and America's Job Center of California collaboration.

Next slide.

For our service delivery for adults and dislocated workers, we are at the onset, the beginning of a four-year procurement cycle for these services, which are to begin July 1st.

We launched our request for proposals last year in October or November.

And we engaged our community members and program participants for their input on the desired and needed services, and we integrated their input where possible.

And the focus for this year's contracted services include job development, enhanced case management services, an expanded awareness of and a placement and apprenticeship programs, and increased integration of AI literacy.

I would say that both the apprenticeship and AI literacy are priorities that have been set at both the state and federal levels.

We've committed to making services available in the four subregions of Alameda County, including the unincorporated areas.

And you can see the selected service providers by sub-region.

I would like to just call out North Cities and Targeted Services.

For the North Cities, we had a failed procurement after launching two requests for proposals.

Our federal regulations allows for us to designate an experience.

We owe a provider, and we have also requested a board resolution for your approval.

Lau Family was selected for one-year contract term, and we plan to launch a new RFP before the new year.

I would like to say that LaToya and our staff will be working with your team, Brianna Brown, to plan and host an event with various organizations in the North Cities sub-region to learn about the Workforce Development Board funding opportunities and the requirements.

And this is all an effort to increase competition and bid submissions for the North Cities sub-region.

Our targeted targeted services, it's new.

It's a one-year programming and custom and it is a customized approach to career services focused on a priority population and their unique challenges to obtaining gainful employment.

The priority populations to be served are English language learners, as well as a portion or part of refugees and asylums who meet the WIOA requirements.

The next slide.

We engaged community and youth participants to get their feedback.

We have services for both in and out of school in the four sub-regions.

We have for the in-school, we have Eaton ROP and Tri-Valley ROP and for out-of-school providers.

We are contracting with La Familia, IRC, IRC, International Rescue Committee, and Alone Community College.

And the focus again is enhanced case management.

We made an effort to reduce the case load so providers can focus on quality and not quantity.

We've also increased the emphasis on work experience opportunities that align with our priority sectors.

Also, there will be development and connection to pre-apprentip programs and also again integration of AI literacy.

Yes.

Thank you, Ronda.

And thank you, Supervisor Rustam and Fortunato Bass for having us here today.

It's a pleasure to be back.

As Rhonda mentioned, Latoya Rita J, the assistant director at the workforce board.

So to go over some of the performance here, through our administrative oversight and support as well as service provider effort.

We served a total of 620 adults and dislocated workers, which hovers around the amount of individuals we tend to serve.

So we tend to serve between 575 to 600 people on any given year in terms of adults and dislocated workers within the Wiola allocation.

We do have other programs and other grants that we developed to supplement the WIOA Title I program.

So this is just our Title I programming.

In California workforce development boards are required to allocate 30% of their WIOA Title I funding towards training activities for adults and dislocated workers.

The youth have a different requirement.

I'll talk a little bit about that.

And so what you'll see here is a reflection of that investment.

So 694,315 dollars invested in occupational skills training.

This allows for our job seekers to keep their skills fresh, to transition to other employment, to assist dislocated workers or laid off workers who may be trying to pivot to a different sector occupation, as well as just helping people keep keep a leg up in the labor market.

We are actually, you know, as we all know, in a very competitive part of our labor markets very competitive.

And so this investment's really really important.

Measurable skill gains is also another performance measure of the WIOA program.

And what it what it indicates is skill progression or training milestone that has been met.

So these numbers are pretty good given where we were last year.

So for our adults, our measurable skill gain or MSG is that 51.6%.

And for dislocated workers, 63.63.6% for training credentials, attainment, our adults and dislocated workers are over 70%, as you can see there on the slide.

And once again, there's been this kind of renewed interest in occupational skills training, which we take as an indication of how competitive the labor market really is for a lot of individuals.

Next slide.

So for our youth programs, which are in school youth serves ages 16 to 21 and out of school 16 to 24.

We served 188 individuals, 67 being in school and 121 being out of school youth.

And the training credential attainment for in school, 60.5%, for out of school 81.1%.

So we are we have seen higher achievements in training credential attainment from last year, about 10% on each population, which includes the completion of high school or postsecondary education.

So that's a positive sign in our data.

So measurable skill gains for young people in our programs, actually higher this year that there's a slight typo there.

For in school youth, it was actually 89%, which is really great to see an indicator that you know competencies have been increased, and for out-of-school youth, 81 point 81.1%.

Placement outcomes, as you've seen in the previous slides, we are putting a renewed emphasis on work experience, as the placement number for out of school youth came in a little bit lower than anticipated at 11.4%, and then for in school youth 60.5%.

So we will be having conversations and helping to guide our providers towards better achievements for placement, especially for out of school youth in WIOA.

Out-of-school youth is our placement is defined for youth rather as being placed in a job, entering the military, or entering post-secondary education options.

Next slide, please.

So we have some really great news with Senate Bill 617 and wanted to kind of walk through the process that we took to get to assigned bill.

So in this first section, an idea was born.

Javier at the time was reporting to me, and he shared a challenge in his work.

Because I was very familiar with the work of the policy office or the policy strategy innovation office, I reached out to share with them our bill idea and drafted a bill proposal.

At that time, the director, policy director presented that bill idea to the personnel administrative and legislation committee.

So thank you both for serving in that capacity on the committee to seek out your endorsement of that idea.

Once you all endorsed that idea, gave the policy office the green light to move forward with full moon strategies as the lobbyist firm to seek out an interested legislator to author the bill.

And the legislator that answered that call of interest, Senator Jesse Arguen authored and expertly led the bill through the legislative process.

We had a chance to actually travel to Sacramento and testify in the Senate's labor committee at the end of April of this year.

And so with much excitement, the bill was signed by the governor on October 1st to improve transparency in the warrant process, which is the worker adjustment retraining notification process and visibility of services by requiring employers to indicate if they plan to collaborate with the workforce development board or other outplacement organizations with the goal of making contact within 30 days of issuance of that letter, and also to include information on the letter about rapid response services and how to access CalFresh as well.

And so pretty much strengthening the safety net during a pretty vulnerable time for dislocated workers was the goal here.

And we noticed that the reason why we took some of that effort was because while many of the employers were compliant, we saw some employers, some of the larger corporations actually not comply, and that was acting as an impasse to really get before those affected workers and share with them what resources are actually available to them during the transition.

That warn letter also goes to the affected workers, and so that you know the employers being able to indicate these kind of things and enlist the services that are available is really critical as well.

So that the warn letter itself also serves as an informational tool to the affected worker.

So we really thank you, both Supervisors TAM and Fortunato Bass for endorsing that.

And we're really happy that our efforts, our collective efforts have materialized in such a good way.

So next slide, please.

So to continue on, the worker adjustment retraining notification.

As I just mentioned, the warns are really submitted by companies with 75 employees or more, and it's a 60 day window of time that employers have to notify the affected workers as well as the local elected official and the workforce development board as well as the mayor.

This information then serves as a signal to our system to deploy rapid response services, as I shared earlier.

The warrant will also contain information about the number of people affected, the positions that they held, if they had bumping rights, aka, was there any union affiliation or rights there, and the location for the layoff.

And so when we see that in taking a look at the bar graph in the Eden area, most of our layoffs in 24 25, which is the previous program year, July 1, 2024 through June 30th of 2025 were in healthcare and manufacturing largely, as well as utilities.

And so with the healthcare, we saw a lot of layoffs from the larger hospital systems versus like the smaller HMO medical centers.

And in manufacturing, it was largely like a food manufacturer in terms of the Eden area.

When we go over to the North Cities, 708 layoffs, so the technology sector was mostly a large multimedia technology firm that engaged in most of the layoffs in the North Cities, and then wholesale, the company was a optical care wholesale provider that had most of the layoffs in the North Cities.

And you can see there also some of the other sectors impacted by layoffs and the number of people impacted by the sector within the sub-region.

Next slide, please.

So in the Tri-Cities, Tri-Cities tends to have a lot of manufacturing jobs, and we saw some larger layoffs from automobile manufacturing as well as electronic component manufacturing, which tends to be more prominent, you know, semiconductor manufacturing and medical device manufacturing.

So we did see that in the layoff information and data, as well as technology, lithium batteries, a couple of companies there that engaged in some layoff because of production turnover and churn from the production line.

For the Tribe Valley, we tend what we saw in the previous year were a lot more layoffs in technology in retail, specifically in retail, coals and safe way, had a lot of layoffs last year.

And then in arts and entertainment recreation, it was a hospitality/slash catering company that had most of the layoffs within 106 layoffs.

And so just a little bit information about Alameda County's labor force.

So the labor force is those that are working and those that are not working but are actively looking.

So last August of 2024, our labor force in Alameda County was actually a little bit smaller, 869,000 individuals compared to August of this year, which is the latest data by the employment development department, to 873,800 individuals.

So we do have a larger labor force this year, generally speaking.

And so what we might see when we look at this data in 25 26, we might see more layoffs just because we have a lot more people in the county looking for work or actively working, working or actively looking for work.

So we'll see how and we'll you know bring that information back at a future committee meeting.

Next slide, please.

And so we wanted to update you on some programs.

As I said, we do have our Rioa Title One, which is formalaic in nature, but then we pursue a lot of grants, develop applications to complement and to serve more people, as you know, our numbers served aren't in the tens of thousands, they're in the hundreds.

So we tried to complement that by bringing in some of these discretionary programs.

So for the American Rescue Plan Act or ARPA, 1.3 million dollars was awarded.

And actually, thank you also, Board of Supervisors for supporting that allocation to support workforce development strategies.

And we were able to partner with the community development agency to secure the 1.3 million dollars.

And then we took a community-led process, leveraging My Eden Voice and some other interest holders in the unincorporated communities to learn about the different processes.

And what we did is we did a couple of listening sessions.

We asked individuals, you know, what's needed in the unincorporated communities that we could help with.

How would we develop these programs with the community in mind?

And so what you see here before you are some strategies that grew out of that process of community engagement.

So the first, the Eden United Church of Christ, they were funded through our office to do community resource navigation and help people really navigate to more of the mainstream programs so they can get the full net of support available.

And so they were awarded over 212,000 dollars to serve as a community resource navigator for the unincorporated community.

And what we tend, what we what we did is we brought all the grantees together so that they could learn about each other's programs and facilitate referrals as well.

So in that navigation strategy, 307 individuals engaged in services, 161 referrals were made to training programs, mostly the adult schools, and a lot of individuals ended up, you know, pursuing certified medical assistance training, for instance, as a result of this, and 48 people completed basic English programming to bolster their English language skills and secure, you know, be in a better position to secure a job that requires English language, the use of English language.

Renaissance entrepreneurship, when we engage a community, one thing that came up was there were a lot of small businesses or a lot of people who had entrepreneurial spirit in the unincorporated communities, and so we we stood up this approach and awarded the Renaissance Entrepreneurship Center.

This was according to the director, their first time really engaging in the unincorporated community.

So they had presence in San Francisco, East Palo Alto, but not necessarily on this side of the bay until we selected them to do this work.

So there was 450,000 awarded to develop entrepreneurial skills, over 133 individuals engaged in business startup trainings.

And so a lot of folks had, you know, like we had a candle making business would bring some of their products out to the pop-up market to understand the market.

You know, what's what's popular?

What are people or the customers drawn towards, and really gave them some hands-on experience with market testing was really the goal there?

105 individuals receive startup cash assistance stipends to really kind of help them get on the way because we learned that a lot of individuals had difficulty securing startup capital.

So we use the sum of this funding to help them do that.

Excuse me, is your mic on?

Yes.

Okay.

Some of the people are saying they are having a whole yearring.

Oh, okay.

I can is that better?

Okay.

Okay.

Thank you for letting me know.

For the YMCA, this was an earn and learn strategy to support the early childhood education training.

The YMCA had this apprenticeship program.

We invested in it of 207,000.

21 individuals enrolled in the program.

17 completed their early childhood education training.

Three were placed in the classroom setting.

And that number three looks a little bit lower, but it's because we had rolling emissions into the program.

So there are still some individuals who even when the program sunset, they were still receiving their classroom credits.

Generally speaking, it was about 9 to 12 college credits before they could get placed into the classroom.

So when we um we left off in the program, there were still people enrolled in the classroom setting so that they could, or the post-secondary setting so that they could earn their full units and then be placed.

And that's a California regulation that you know individuals must first earn those early childhood education credits before being placed in the workplace.

What was great about the strategy is that YMCA was actually able to place many of the individuals that were going through the training.

So we have some people right now who are still with the Y and working, continuing to work because of this investment.

Next slide, please.

So for vocational English and occupational skills training, that was an investment with Rubicon programs, $200,000 awarded to provide access to vocational English.

52 individuals received occupational training as well.

Many individuals gravitating towards medical assisting and some of the other medical like CNA and CMA certified medical assistant training.

26 have completed training and four placed in employment.

Once again, this number is a little bit larger than it is, you know, how it's represented here because we did have rolling kind of emissions as well in this program.

So you do have some individuals who of the 26 are still you know engaging in placement activities because they got started a little bit later in the program.

For Mandela Partners, this was our culinary skills training program.

Um 120,000 awarded to provide culinary skills training.

13 individuals enrolled and seven enrolled in food entrepreneurship workshops.

This program started a little bit later than the rest of them.

So some of those outcomes are still materializing.

For the Castro Valley or Digital Equity, we did with additional funding under ARPA at initially we had 1 million, and once we added, or once we were able to secure an additional 300,000, we were able to be able to add the last two approaches that culinary skills training and then the digital equity piece here with the two adult schools.

So Castor Valley Adult and Career Education and San Leandro Adult and Career Education.

So over $50,000 awarded to those two adult schools to provide digital and basic computer skills.

76 individuals have been enrolled so far, 36 completed training and received a Chromebook so that they can continue to learn you know and apply what they learned in the classroom at home.

And so we we currently have uh fall and spring sessions are either in progress or will begin soon.

Um, and what we've learned too from the schools and and in talking to some of the clients, or the students in this case, um many of those interested are like 55 plus, and so this has been really popular with um an older segment of the population.

Next slide, please.

The student training and employment program or step forward.

This was a grant application developed in-house with our uh fund uh developer, Christina New Win, who helped to put this together.

And we were awarded from the Department of Rehabilitation through the foundation of California's community colleges to develop a project to serve students with disabilities.

It's a three-year project.

It aims to serve 105 students or 35 each year with a subset of 20 each year being placed on the job for work experience.

So each student or the subset of 20 individuals or 60 at the end of three years would have gotten 75 to 100 hours of work experience at 20 an hour.

And 60 participants have been targeted for work-based learning.

Of the 60, about 20 of them have been placed.

And so we have young people placed, you know, veteran veterinarian establishment, bakery, retail, so uh dental office.

So we work closely with the pro with the program to help with the placement or help to generate ideas around uh placements for for these young individuals in the program.

This part this program is in partnership with the Eden Area Regional Occupational Program.

And with that, I will pass it over to Rhonda.

Thank you, Latoya.

I like to just start by saying that one of ACWDB's priority sectors is health care.

And we've been piloting and implementing various cohort-based occupational skills training in the health care field.

And I'll just take a moment.

I know there was a conversation inquiring about how the workforce board you know is helping to meet the workforce challenges for the senior older population.

We have piloted with adult and aging their health care pathway program.

So we have supported for CNA training as well as home health nurse training.

We also have another pilot that's just underway.

We didn't include it in a presentation today.

It's a partnership with Skills Trade Climb Higher and RWA programming to train individuals in certified medical assistants.

So we are, you know, ramping up efforts to you know train individuals in the health care field.

And this other project that I want to talk about today is our metrics learning and emergency medical services core collaboration.

It is for emergency medical training, and so we um it's a program, it consists of four hours of online study, followed by 16 weeks of classroom instruction plus over 20 hours of clinical training.

The program outcomes for this first group that we have supported were very strong.

We had a hundred percent completion rate for the online curriculum, 89% completion rate for the full program, and completion and 88% of the program participants passed the NREMT exam.

And over 50% have been placed in employment starting at $23 an hour.

We are still reconciling and following up on the placement.

It is an ongoing process to collect the information on who's uh been placed in employment, and we have another cohort that's in progress with 16 students, and we anticipate the same successful outcomes for young adults, and as they are not just being trained for a job, but a career in the healthcare industry.

Next slide.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Um, our marine trade and water Transportation Career initiative is a regional partnership with the Oakland and Contra Costa Workforce Development Boards.

Um, we were funded an award of about 3.9 million dollars for a two-year project term, which has been extended for another 14 months to enroll 300 job seekers across both Alameda and Contra Costa counties in short-term training, which will lead to quality jobs in the maritime industry.

Individuals in this program receive uh stipends as they're going through the training as well as support services.

To date, 65 individuals have been enrolled, and 60 have completed for a 92% graduation rate.

And I wanna say that this training takes place in Vallejo, and some aspects of it takes place in our area, Alameda County.

So for this high completion rate is really positive because they really students have really committed to traveling the distance to in order to complete the program.

So they're very uh focused and committed to this opportunity.

Um there's been 41 individuals that have been placed in employment for a 69% employment rate.

We currently have a cohort that started in September and will be finishing up and ending November 14th, and we have a total of 23 individuals that have been enrolled.

Um Latoya and the team, along with our agency grant writer, Christina Newen, they applied for and were successfully awarded 900, over $900,000 for the Department of Rehabilitation, America's Job Center of California collaboration grant, which has been funded through the WEOA Title IV vocational rehabilitation.

This grant involves system level change for job seekers with adult job seekers with disabilities.

We are in the planning and ramp up stage phase of this particular collaboration.

Once the contracts are executed, we anticipate implementation at the beginning of the year.

We will serve 30 participants over two-year project term and implement new approaches and coordinating services and co-case management.

And that will conclude our presentation.

I'll take questions.

Thank you for that presentation.

I had the opportunity to participate in one of your graduations at the San Leandro Adult School for the CNA certification.

So this is obviously working really well.

So I will start with Supervisor Fortunata Bass on questions and comments.

Thank you for this report.

It's very comprehensive.

There's a lot of work, a lot of strategies, um, maybe an overarching question first.

And you know, thank you so much, Director Boykin, for meeting with my office and doing an orientation together with uh the chair of the workforce development board.

Um I know that you've been doing a lot of planning with the board.

I am, you know, just curious in terms of the larger big picture high-level overarching strategy.

It seems like some of the programs are opportunity-based because of grants that you might apply for and receive.

Um, is there more is there a strategy in terms of particular communities that are being targeted or particular industries?

Um, you know, any sort of high-level overarching strategies that bring these programs together.

Well, I would say that um some of the strategies that our board is focused on.

We're looking to expand our knowledge base and implementation of apprenticeships.

That's an area of focused for us, as well as the artificial intelligence literacy, because those are driving priorities for the state and federal.

So we are in turn in response, working on strategies that will cross all of our various programs for adult dislocated workers and uh youth.

Other areas that we are focused on is really increasing our awareness in the community about the workforce development board, thus, you know, our engagement with you all, all of the board of supervisors and your staff to continue to let you know all what we're doing, ways that we can partner and collaborate.

And those are just some of the ones that come to mind.

Thank you.

We are a division within the agency, and so as the funding opportunities that we have, as we're able to meet with various departments, you know, for example, the CNA healthcare pathway program, you know, uh it was connection between you know the directors, you know, coming together and talking about this opportunity, and we you know got together and figured out how we could best support each other.

Um, and it is a goal that we're working towards more partnerships because uh workforce development is our area of expertise, and in that particular situation, adult and aging, their expertise is serving adults, uh senior adults, and so we're looking for those opportunities, having flexible funding also gives us more opportunities to collaborate.

Thank you for that.

And um, just continuing on the trend around partnerships.

Um, you know, the East Bay Economic Development Alliance is right next door, very close relationship with our supervisors.

Um, is that an area is there collaboration there in terms of looking at industry sectors and especially where sectors are growing or they're downsizing industrial lands is an area where I know they've got a special project going.

Yeah, we um East Bay EDA is um a member of our board.

Um, when there are funding opportunities, we do collaborate.

Uh we attend and engage in a lot of the events and activities that are hosted by East Bay EDA.

So I would say we also have invested in their report, their annual report that they uh publish around what's happening in the workforce development landscape, so there is collaboration with East Bay EDA.

Terrific.

I know uh it takes time to develop relationships, and community colleges is another sector.

I know one of our Peralta board members is particularly interested in manufacturing apprenticeships, so maybe I can make sure you're connected to him offline.

Yes, please do.

Okay.

Um, I do have a few questions about the particular programs, and again, thank you so much for working with my office as well as with my staff, Brianna Brown.

We definitely want to collaborate on that next RFP for North County and make sure that we're successful generating more, you know, more applications for that RFP.

Um, but in general, for the adult dislocated worker program, the youth program.

Do you also have demographic information, including geography or individual demographics like language, for example?

Yes, uh, we do have demographic data.

It wasn't in this slide deck.

We were trying to keep it condensed as possible.

Um, but if interested, we can bring it back to the next update if that's a interest.

Sure, or maybe sharing that with um at least the two of us and maybe each board member, it would be helpful for me just to know a little bit more about what's happening in my district, not only with the workforce, but also with the employers.

Yes.

And then for both of these programs for the adult and the youth, can you help me understand a little bit more about the measurable skill gains and what that looks like?

Yes.

So measurable skill gains are pretty much whenever a participant engages in some kind of skill progression.

So for our youth programs, that could be measured by their transcript.

You know, are they going from one GPA to the next?

Um it could be um apprenticeship, you know.

Have they entered an apprenticeship and their skills are developing, progression progressing from one level to the next.

For our adults and dislocated workers, is if they enroll in a training, were they able to get from one module to the next?

So it's pretty much any kind of progressive outcome within trainings or their pursuit of knowledge.

Thank you.

That's really helpful.

And for the youth, for the out-of-school youth, what's the age range for that category?

16 to 24.

Okay.

And how are the youth referred to the programs?

Yes, so as our our role as the administrators of the program, once we procure and we bring on the service provider, we meet with them to have like an initiation conversation, meeting, um, to talk about those different things.

Um, what we've learned is that our service providers are using multiple strategies to engage in referrals and outreach.

Um, so social media, especially for the youth, a lot of social media and Instagram and Facebook, for the adults, and it'll also include tabling and going to different events.

For the adults, a little bit of social media outreach, but mostly going out to the community, getting out to the libraries, you know, going to different job fairs to make sure that people know that the services are available.

So it's a little bit of multimedia, but also just physical presence out in the community, as well as connecting with other program providers and other organizations to you know to bring in different referrals and get people signed up for services.

Thank you.

Um, I might have too many questions to ask just given the time that we've had, um, but I am very interested in all of these programs and learning more, and in particular, like you know, many of my colleagues, just making sure that when there are opportunities for training and placement, that we're able to share them with our constituents.

And so, what's the best way for us as offices to be working with you around these programs?

Absolutely.

Yeah, we uh we have a pretty good social media presence.

Uh, we also have an email distribution list.

Uh, we um, you know, we get that we try to we really try to use our social media, and then our social media is linked on our website, so by virtue of of that, you know, people can follow us on social media and see what's available.

Um, so we can we're we're happy to, you know, I believe most of your staff are on our email uh distribution list.

So I think that would be the best way to get the information out.

Um toy and Rhonda, are there opportunities to share announcements for the board members?

Put on your newsletters.

Yes.

We'll just as things as opportunities arise, we'll just make sure to send those.

I think sometime is the timing.

We just need to, it'd be great for us to have the schedule.

I'll make sure to work with your teams to kind of know when information needs to be presented in order for it to be a timely posting.

But we definitely could let you know about the events of the funding opportunities, as well as uh when we are recruiting for training opportunities.

We can definitely forward that information to your offices.

That's really helpful, and um, we'll just share the rest of our questions over email if we have additional ones we want to make sure we get answered.

Thank you so much for all of the work.

Welcome.

Thank you.

Very good questions.

But your department and your office did the heavy lifting actually.

So thank you for that because clearly the collaboration with the workforce development boards when it comes to layoffs in certain industries within our county is going to be important.

So in terms of that, like for example, you noted that the Eden area warrants showed I I guess that was the highest.

It was actually the hospital system.

Yeah.

So the question I had is more self-serving, like the county has these vacancies.

Is there a way in which we can like have first right of refusal when it comes to recruitment with some of these folks that are being displaced from industries?

So I think you know, when people are displaced, what we tend to do in our rapid response orientation is we have the career centers present so that they're able to firsthand share that, you know, services are available, that occupational skills training is available.

So we we do try to get at the front line to some extent of where those layoffs are happening.

Now, of course, it depends on how responsive the employer was, and that's why we kind of spearheaded six um Center Bill 617 is because we didn't see too much.

We did see some response, but some employers were not responding.

And so you know, that's that's one strategy strategy that we use to kind of get before that active audience of those who've been laid off.

So I think that could be one avenue is just you know to continue to do that.

We've added um something we're calling open rapid response.

So if an employer, because the caveat with Warren is that employers that have 74 employees or less aren't required to submit the warrant.

So you're really small, mom and pop shops, uh, they don't have this requirement.

So when we did, so then we did open rapid response for those who um didn't come through the warn process by emailing them through Cal jobs, anyone that has an active unemployment insurance claim uh will get a notification that we're holding an orientation, and that's our way to kind of engage with those individuals that didn't come through the traditional process.

Okay, that's helpful to know along those lines.

Um you go ahead.

I was just gonna say just for an idea, I've been seeing some great uh posters on hiring for the county recruitment.

Maybe we can um start to share those as we are able in those situations where we are able to connect with um impacted employees.

Anybody suited for social worker one to now they I mean, it could be the manufacturing industry, it could be a variety of different um, you know, employ employees, impacted employees across different industry sectors that we'll be interacting with, but as a rapid re-employment strategy, we definitely could, you know, uh integrate at least by providing individuals with information about the job openings with the county.

Yeah, I I think um Supervisor Ford and Anabass talked about the importance of partnerships and given what's going to happen uh with the work requirements with Medical and ABOD, that integration with, you know, whether it's our food banks, uh, the SNAP requirements will be different.

I think having that uh close collaboration and opportunity will be very important.

So are we looking at maybe expanding that into the navigation services?

One thing we are looking at in terms of uh food insecurity, um, I believe there are some plans underway to see if the Social Services Agency could serve as a food pickup.

Um so that's something that's under expiration at the point at this point in time for those that will have work requirements because of HR1, either the volunteer hours or employment.

Uh, we have been in some of the conversations led by policy, strategy and innovation, the policy office to strategize and figure out what that could be.

Um, so those conversations are underway and um we've talked about you know data sharing, you know.

If someone is um in workforce benefits administration program, you know, and they're also enrolled in our our WIOA program, um, that could serve as continuation in work activity that helps them to sustain their benefits.

So we've we we're currently in an expiration of those different ideas together.

Oh, good.

That's good to know.

Thank you.

Um, I don't have any more questions on this item.

Are we at a point where we can take public comment on this?

Yes, we do.

Do we have any public comments?

There are no speakers.

And uh similarly on uh item two, we didn't have any public comments beyond what we had.

Okay.

Um so we are now at the public comment period on items that are not on today's agenda.

There are no speakers.

Great.

Thank you all for your presentation.

This meeting is adjourned.