We met at um exactly.

We did.

We met like very yeah, very early on.

Um, two percent.

Oh, okay.

I'll grab it, thank you.

She said she actually sounds like do you want to give her a few minutes or do you want come share um Miller?

Yeah.

Or do you want me to get started and then have her takeover?

Yeah, I think that's fine.

Because we have some.

So here and then when that comes, maybe we will just kind of I could just do it from here easily.

So you can just do it there.

I think that's just about it.

Yeah.

And then you have a script.

Yes, it's right here.

So you'll just call to order, and then any registered public speakers.

And then we'll do all three.

Okay, it's family now.

Yeah, and then by the time public skills are done.

All right.

Yeah.

I'm gonna go ahead and get started.

Okay.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

Sorry about that.

Good morning.

The hour is 10.05.

Having arrived, I'd like to call the Chicago Co County violence against women task force meeting to order.

Are there any registered public speakers?

Yes, we have five public speakers.

Uh before we start, I will read the uh public testimony.

Uh members of the public who wish to testify had until 24 hours before the scheduled start of the meeting to register in order to do so.

Speakers will have three minutes to address the task force and will be alerted when they have one minute time remaining, 30 seconds, and then when the time is expired.

Persons authorized to provide public testimony shall not use vulgar, abusive, discriminatory, profane or otherwise inappropriate language lasting the task force.

Failure to act appropriately or failure to adhere to the time requirements may result in expulsion from the meeting and or disqualify the person for providing any future testimony.

Written only comments provided prior to the start of the task force meeting will be made of the meeting record and available to the members of the public.

I just also want to note if anyone who is not on the task force or up here, uh this is the time to speak, because with questions that is just for task force members.

I will call the first person, uh Alena Curly here.

Okay, Arthur Ellenston.

You may begin.

I'm gonna try to read this in three minutes.

I might not get through all of it, but you have my written comments.

She did this telling more lies than I can count.

I was falsely accused of wife and child abuse.

Once I was able to speak directly to the judge who ordered me out of my house in May of 94, he gave me camp custody of my children, and in June of 99 when that custody order became permanent.

During those five years of my life, my wife went through about six words trying to get custody back.

I used one lawyer.

Had that judge in the original hearing at May 3rd seen the many police reports filed against my wife and her parents by me and others.

He never would have issued the order of the known the repediatrician sent my wife to a psychiatrist.

He never rewarded me out of my house.

He never would have given sole attempt custody of my child to his abuser, his mentally ill mother.

At last count, she suffered from seven different mental disorders, including bipolar disorder, dissociative identity disorder, which is commonly known as multiple personality disorder, and five others most of you have never heard of, unless you're a clinician in the middle health world, including obsessive compulsive disorder, borderline personality disorders, kids on personality disorder, and others whose name I can't remember right now, however, it's narcissistic personality order, which I think I correctly in your copy, but I still wrong.

The solution to the problem is when someone comes to court at an expart hearing, they need to do background checks at the courthouse.

Background checks on the accuser and on the accused.

By doing so, the judge will have information available so that he doesn't give custody of children to their abuser, which he did back in May of 1994.

One minute background checks would have revealed my wife who was mentally ill.

Background checks would reveal multiple police reports against my wife.

The pastor who helped her get that order protection.

That pastor, the congregation that demanded the denomination fire that pastor because they knew I was a good dad and my wife was mentally ill.

And they shut the church down when the denomination refused to fire the pastor.

My wife went to another church meeting in a high school and that church got checked down because the people were listening to my children.

We said we were live with daddy, and they weren't listening to my wife.

And that's the problem.

We need to listen to children more than we need to listen to women who are falsely accusing their husbands.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next is Frank Sheck.

Thank you.

Good morning.

My name is Frank Chiyak.

I'm a task force member.

I'm a volunteer at domestic violence outreach.

We came out of the Catholic Church.

We have 150 domestic violence awareness committees.

Everybody votes.

Typically, Tom Dark is our keynote speaker.

We have law enforcement as well as victims issues.

I wanted to let the committee know that as part of the sessions, we've attended.

I've listened to the network deputy director talk about having more lawyers represent uh domestic violence survivors.

As a result of our last Monday meeting, uh, we are going to start moving towards through October, domestic violence month, to solicit uh the major law firms in the city uh and get and ask them for 15 to 20 percent of their pro bono budget to be directed towards victims.

Uh, we're gonna start with our firm, uh Cat Mutant, which has 700 lawyers, we think we can spare a few for that first.

Uh the other thing I wanted to apprise the committee of is that a few years ago we all want to do something about the violence and particularly uh uh victims who are in shelters in emergency and transitional shelter.

Um I decided that it would be manufacturing jobs to give people a career and uh how to manage resources that they may be not effective with.

I pivoted to Daily College.

Uh we are operational for two and a half years.

We have an eight-week program, it's free.

One minute.

It's uh Dana and I found grant money for it all.

Um daily college because they have a standalone building with 60 million dollars worth of machine tools, and in eight weeks, it can pass two exams.

Uh, you don't need a GEP, you don't need a high school diploma, and uh you passed the two exams, we give you 500 hours.

Uh the program is free, as I said, 30 seconds, and uh uh we uh we'll get you a job starting at about 23 dollars an hour, and 10% of our uh students after two years are earning over 30.

So we're trying to give them an effective way to manage their resources.

Thank you very much.

Anyone wants information?

I'm I'm loaded.

Thank you so much.

If you would like to leave information at the table too.

Okay, okay, and then next is Jessica Jackson.

Sorry, all the way.

And then Patricia, you'll be after.

So we're here today to talk about domestic violence and the assumption with domestic violence is that it's men against women.

That's the assumption.

But the reality is, like these men got up and talked about earlier that women abuse men too.

That's a fact.

Now, what I'm more concerned about is all the different type of abuses that are not being dealt with today.

The emotional abuse, verbal abuse, financial abuse that are done to women, and particularly black women, and in particular dumb about public officials.

My question is what does the victim do when it's the public officials, the Cook County public officials and the city officials that's doing the abuse?

For example, the abuse that was done to these black women whose property was stolen by Cook County officials by these property tax sales that were found to be unconstitutional in 2023 by the United States support ruling, but yet Cook County and Governor JP Prisoner continue to do the illegal property sales for three more years, stripping these black women from their property, from their equity, leaving them without a dime, and then in my case, all have heard you come here talking about how the court system by way of the public administrator, Louis J.

Apostle, Thomas Leon Webber, who probate Judge Terrence McGuire, how those men are abusing me, how they've made those squatters stay on me and deprive me of income.

Now, the attorney registration and disciplinary commission, Illinois Rule of Professional Conduct, Rule 8.4A3, and 8.484 says an attorney must report illegal conduct involving dishonesty, dishonesty, fraud, deceit, or misrepresentation.

Yet I see in here, but commissioner, Scott Britton, attorney 30 seconds, uh Lamont Williams, Bridget Dadney, all of which are attorneys and have done absolutely nothing about the abuse that's being done to me.

What do you say about the sheriff who put illegal eviction papers on my building and put locks on my doors that belong to me?

What about that abuse?

Where do I hope for that?

Where's the funding for that?

And you want to have all these women in here talking about makes you get.

Where's the funding for that?

Next is Patricia Dean.

I have a concern.

That no Shui Garcia, Angie Guerrero Coilar, and the law enforcement on District 8.

Um they are protecting them.

I mean, not to jail, to court.

I'm trying to summon them, but the thing is that nobody wants to give me their address.

Now, I was told by the judge that I asked her if I could announce it on the newspaper, you know, that um summon them through the newspaper, and she said, No, you need to do your homework.

You need to look for those persons yourself.

I'm putting myself out there to be harassed again.

I don't want to abuse nobody.

I don't want them to be saying that I'm harassing anybody.

Now they're telling me, well, get yourself a lawyer.

I'm retired.

I earn less than 20,000 a year.

Okay, I have to pay the rent, my food, and I only have left 150 for the whole month.

How can I afford an attorney?

And then they tell me, oh, you can go to Latinas.

I go to Jadez Latinas, and once I tell them the names of the uh the not the victims, the defenders, uh, it's uh Jesus Garcia and Eddie uh Freddie Arroyo, they tell me, oh, you know what, we cannot help you.

I'm like so then can you guide me to who could help me?

Oh, we don't know, we cannot help you.

So then I'm here to ask, where do I go?

Who can help me?

Get information about these two men so that I could take summon them and take them to court.

I thank you very much.

And I am an elderly, I am a hundred, a hundred, yeah, right.

I have six-seven years old, and um oh my god, maybe I'm going to be until a hundred years old, but we'll have a I will not suffer a lot because of the bones.

But um, I need your help.

Thank you.

Thank you.

And next is Diane Brown.

And after Diane Brown will be George Blakebourne.

Okay, just a name for me.

Good morning.

Anyway, starts.

Just say your name for me.

Elder Diane Brown.

To um President Tony Fredwicker and her absent to all uh Donna Miller, Christian Commissioner Donna Miller, uh, Arthur Woman, Tamaris.

I was here in the beginning of the task force, and I want to thank you.

We have made progress, I have to say that.

And I want to thank you all for listening, but hearing.

Thank you for the task force with Cook County and uh uh City of Chicago.

Well, we have a lot of work to do.

I've been here to all the hearings.

I am excited, all that's getting ready to happen with this force.

I want to thank you again.

I can stand up here and complain, but I won't complain this morning.

I'm appreciative because you did not have to put this together, Commissioner Donna Miller and all the commissioners that signed on, all of the aldermans that signed on.

I thank you.

Lives have been taken.

Yes, we lost some, but we have made progress.

I see it, and I thank you so much.

We have a lot to do, and I'm willing to stand to continue with this.

Thank you again this morning.

Thank you so much.

Unless we have George Blake Warner.

This is a man in the world, but it's nothing without a woman and a girl.

So this test for balance against women.

Black women.

A black woman and a white woman and the Chinese woman.

She's she's the back Madonna.

Even the Polish realized.

She's mama.

Or the back Magadera.

Over in Poland, they they recognize this.

And some of our black women don't even know that they are the first woman on planet Earth.

And the abuse that they have received in America, enslaved in America, rape in America, and their babies, the children were so out in America.

But the agreement act is that some of the black men saw how a good free the white man was treating the black woman.

And some of them pick the habit also.

I challenge you lady to see how many black women are in the archery in these oppressions.

The black.

She doesn't know her power.

Well, they got a little phone now, the blue from the King Blue Woman.

Where the down rings, that means she's married.

And she pulls her man around by her aid stream.

She has power.

The power of the black woman.

How many different the white women are not having babies now?

They don't want the black women to have them.

The abortion.

They'll be go to the prison.

And do a fee of how many black women compare with other white women, Asian women that are unlocked up and each concentration job.

You black women got to remember you're a mother.

And you must claim your free the power of the black woman.

Thank you.

And then is uh Alena Curly here.

No, okay, then uh that concludes your list of public speakers.

Thank you.

Thank you to all the speakers and uh thank you all for being here today uh for the task force.

Um this is our last executive meeting, and I just want to thank everyone for your participation over these last few months, as well as Katie Dunn.

Thank you so much, Katie, for organizing all of this and getting all of our speakers here and presenters here and facilitating these meetings, Alder Woman and Tavares.

Thank you so much for taking the lead as well.

And I know some of our other members aren't here.

Um, Commissioner Anaya and Commissioner Degnan, and I think their teams have been very involved too.

So I just want to thank everyone, and now we're gonna go right into our last presentations, and Katie, I'm gonna kick it over to you.

Okay, great.

Um, our first um presenters uh were at our first meeting in January, and since then they have done an amazing amount of work, an incredible amount of work over the last few months, talking to different people in the system, talking to stakeholders, visiting courthouses.

Um, so we're really excited for their work today.

So we have Dr.

Kelly Costello from uh Northwestern University and IIT John Buckley from the public policy lab and with assistants from Byron.

We're a power and Ashley Pagar, who's here and back here for Impact Partners.

We want to thank you all for all of your work.

Um, and then they set up okay, yeah, okay we're good.

Okay, and and thank you for the promotion, Katie.

I just have a master's degree, not a PhD, so I just be transparent.

Um there we go.

So this is just a quick um outline of what we'll be covering, some introductions, a little bit of background.

We're gonna do a deep dive into the survivor journey and talk about some of the themes and preliminary findings and identify some opportunity areas, and we are really encouraging folks to when we go into questions and answers, share any ideas that you're moving forward.

Uh and then it's going move over there with a microphone.

Certainly.

Is that better?

Yes, okay.

These are the partners that have been involved from the very beginning.

And in particular, we're gonna do a little bit more uh detail about uh impact partners.

We are what you call a strategic design consultancy, and we just help government, nonprofits, and companies come up with new ideas.

And as part of that, we do design solutions, we help business growth.

And we also do talent matching.

And what I do is work with people right out of undergraduate and graduate schools to work on projects for nonprofits, government startups, to begin to continue upskilling and hopefully finding full-time jobs and other opportunities.

And this is when I also want to point out Akshay again because he's been an integral part of this team for the last several months.

So thank you very much for your talent and acumen.

And I'm going to hand this off to John now.

Good morning, everybody.

My name is John Buckley.

I am the practice director of PPL Midwest, and Public Policy Lab is a nonprofit that works with government to improve public services for primarily low-income and marginalized populations.

We do two types of projects here that the kind of some case studies the work we do often is in service and systems design.

So on the left-hand side, you'll see a collaboration that we did with the Biden White House, which was for trying to bring together multiple different government agencies all around the life experience of a new mother.

And then the on the right-hand side, the other type of work that we do is often probably the material design, where this is recently we worked with the Michigan court system to redesign for 1,100 forums for self-representing litigants to it, ensure that that process and the access to the courts was easier for self-representing litigants.

Okay.

And so today we're really focusing on survivorhood and victim sort of pathways throughout the court system as they become survivors.

These are all the different members of the task force.

For some of you that may are maybe newer today, the state of Illinois, Cook County, local agencies, and the city of Chicago have all been working together for the past several months.

And I don't know, Katie, was there anything you wanted to add to that?

Um, no, no, no, this is great.

Okay, great.

And then this has sort of been the organization of the different uh work groups within the task force, and we are six.

Um, so as we go into this, we'll be mapping services and identifying gaps and opportunities.

What we've done over the last several months, we've interviewed folks at two different courts, everyone from frontline um specialists, uh lead specialists, uh, police department director of counseling services, and then also people that are really involved in sort of survivor engagement uh specialists and other DV services, and then at the Skokie and Markham courthouses, we talked to judges, the state's attorney's office.

We've also brought in um advocates from the nonprofit world and from educational institutions to get a better picture of the lay of the land and to get a lot of different perspectives around what people think would benefit survivors, and then we also engage survivors throughout the process early on in some interviews, and then as we created our materials for today, we had them weigh in, talk about their own experiences and help us sort of prioritize what we think is most critical for survivors going through the process.

Um so at a high level, we originally looked at both the criminal and the civil court process, and as you can see, and this is kind of the simplified version.

Um, there's lots of complexity.

We left a QR code there for any of you that would like to delve into more detail.

Um so we looked at both of those experiences, and but today we're really gonna focus just on the civil court process and how people get emergency orders of protection.

I think you were trying to get the QR code going to go for a second.

Certainly.

And then um just making certain everybody's gotten the QR code, and then this presentation will be available later, right, Katie on the on the site.

Yes.

Okay, great.

So if you didn't get it today, there's another chance uh later to access it.

Great.

Okay, so as we look at the civil court process, what we've done is kind of break it down into smaller parts of the journey.

So from the moment of the incident when the survivor decides to act and they visit the court, they'll stop at the clerk's office and ask for the paperwork for the order of protection.

They'll then decide whether they're going to kind of self-navigate through the process, seek representation, or to work with an advocate assistant.

About 70 to 90 percent of petitioners self-navigate through this process and go without representation.

And then for the folks that do seek advocate assistance, there wasn't really any signage when you got to the court.

So when we went into Skokie, the clerk's office said, Oh, it's in 218, go up there, and there was no signage on any of the navigation to get us there.

So after asking several people and finding someone fortunately standing outside the door, figured out where we were supposed to go.

I think this obviously we just went to two courts.

This would vary, but I think both at Markham and Skokie, it was a little bit difficult to find those advocate services.

And then if you happen to have brought your children and you didn't really want them to be exposed to the stories, you might go to child services, but those are mostly focused on folks that have a court date that day, and they may not have room for you if you're there for an emergency order of protection.

So there were just a few of the things that we saw where people might drop off or get overwhelmed in the process of navigation.

Once they did get to the filing process, they grab the paperwork, they get the initial order of protection hearing set up, and then they would have a follow-up court date.

As they're getting the paperwork, in the bottom left, you can see that there might be multiple places for them to go.

So they first go in the clerk's office, then they go to DV area or the advocate's office for the emergency order protection paperwork, and then they might be told that they have other paperwork, they go back to the clerk's office, or after talking to an advocate, they might decide, oh, this is really a criminal court case.

If they don't have a police report, they need to go to the police department, or if there's guardianship needs, they might have to go downtown to get that paperwork.

So sometimes just navigating, getting all the right pieces of paper that you need to go through the process can be a bit overwhelming for someone who may be very emotionally traumatized.

Once they get their follow-up court date, they'll have 14 to 21 days.

Thank you.

This still has to be served, that paperwork needs to be served to the respondent physically.

And so they're constantly on pens and needles, not knowing when, where and how that will happen.

And during that time, they're especially vulnerable.

If that the orders of protection are served, and the person breaks the order of protection, then it becomes a criminal court case.

And so these are just things that sort of monitoring and being aware of, and also thinking about okay, when I do have my order of protection hearing, what all do I need to take with me for that experience?

Um of the things that we thought was especially helpful was an EOP statement guide that the YWCA put together to help folks that are petitioners sort of clarify their story to give them a bit of a better understanding of what the legal language is that they that will help us or translate this their own experiences into the story that's clearer for the judge, like when what's the last incident?

And so it's it's less of a like telling them what to say and more saying for tell your story in a way that's clear and succinct that helps the judge make a decision about your situation.

And we heard that both from the advocate side and then from the judge's side in court when he said, you know, it's really helpful when someone's narrative is clear, concise, there's no contradictions, and they've had time to sort of think through what's most important.

And so that just seemed like a really great sort of standard that's been set of how do we help survivors sort of clarify their thoughts and prepare for the courts.

And then once that EOP hearing occurs, and there might be might be multiple hearings that occur.

Any of these can get dismissed if the petitioner doesn't show up.

So they may be nervous because they're going to come face to face with their abuser.

They may not realize that they have to be at each and every court hearing.

And so sometimes the cases are dismissed.

If they couldn't get child quit care, they couldn't get off work and couldn't show.

There are virtual services, and that's help some folks make it there, but there's also a lot of drop-off between the EOP and the next hearing, or people that just haven't been able to successfully navigate getting all of their resources in place.

And then once there's the final hearing, you have the case outcome.

And for those that um had advocates or help along the way, there's some follow-up support in place and connection to resources.

For the 70 to 90 percent that's self-sort of navigated through this, they may not have access to follow-on resources.

So that's another time in the journey.

People may be left sort of vulnerable, continuing to sort of thend for themselves going forward.

It ends at the last hearing, but the survivor's journey really continues for a long time after.

One of the things that we really noticed to the two different courts is that Markham has huge volume.

And so they really have to be almost more transactional because they have a great number of people that they have to work with and get through the system.

Skoki has lower numbers, they have time for a bit more hand holding, a bit more um resource giving, you know, and and and assistance with all the paperwork.

Also at Markham, different judges will handle civil versus criminal court cases.

We had a benefit of going into a court where the judge heard both civil and criminal, and while we were there, the um one of the cases that we saw decaying went from civil to criminal, and the judge was like, I've been here this whole time.

I know that you knew not to break that order protection, and now this is what has to happen.

And because he had that continuity of the case and really understood everything that had happened, it was really easy for him to make a decision about what needed to happen next.

Um, and so those types of um provisions and continuity kind of help in the overall sort of structuring uh of courthouses.

And then I'm gonna hand this off to John.

Hi.

All right.

Um we through all that uh qualitative and secondary research that the team did.

We we landed on five different themes, and each one of these themes has three findings.

So we're we're in for 15 of these, and we'll go through them together.

Um I just want to tee that up for you.

The first one here is really about barriers to entry, entering the court system.

And uh the theme is that fear, emotional connection, culture, and institutional mistrust are the key barriers for entering that legal process.

And I think what we identified is that that these are um are kind of ongoing challenges, and particularly this first point down here speaks to that, in that often folks who are showing up to court and going through the whole court process have actually experienced abuse multiple times beforehand.

So there's these cycles of abuse.

Um often have the multiple reasons for that, but one of the reasons that we we've heard about a number of times was the fear of what the abuser would do if they approached uh uh law enforcement or if they uh sovereign order protection was a key barrier.

One of the legal advocates we spoke with down here, this quote talks about how uh in their training, they hear that seven to eight different occurrences was what they expect before somebody actually goes through the court process.

Um, and so that's a major kind of thing to keep in mind as we think about who's showing up uh in these processes.

The second really talks about the beliefs or the values um that the uh the people have.

Um, and so your guilt, shame, a sense of betrayal are things that stopped um some of the survivors we spoke with uh from taking action.

Uh and the quote here is I had three different instances where he was arrested, but I didn't follow through.

And trail betraying the person I chose to have a baby with.

And so there's a kind of deeper fundamental cultural belief and understanding of this relationship that needs to be kind of unwoven for for someone to feel like they can enter into the institutional kind of legal system.

And lastly, we were hearing this, and so felt it was important to call out, but there is uh concern about what are the unintended consequences that might happen if one seeks help.

Um so that's from issues around uh what might happen when the police show up, what might happen again beyond that to the survivor uh going through the support process.

Um this is a quote from uh uh uh the CPD um uh counseling services, but the fear is committed, they don't know what the police will or won't do.

Sometimes they want services, but they don't want to file a complaint.

Um we also heard from a survivor directory who talked about uh the when they call the police, the police end up shooting their dog, and so that was those kind of stories I think reverberate around the community and and and kind of add to that sense of of fear and or barrier to Andrew.

Second theme is around procedures, and the the main finding here is that court processes are radically system-centered and not survivor-centered.

So at the start of this, you remember me introducing myself when I talked about that we do human-centered design of public policy lab, and that's because it is primary we're all used to this, we're used to kind of showing up to whether it's a company or it's uh a government service or it's anything, usually they're designed around efficiency, they're designed around the needs of the organizations, and that's uh that's commonplace, and it's kind of to be expected, and as much as possible, we try and revert that to be a little bit more human-centered, designed around the customer or the service user.

We're used to kind of showing up to whether it's a company or it's uh a government service or it's anything, usually they're designed around efficiency, they're designed around the needs of the organizations, and that's uh that's commonplace, and it's kind of to be expected.

And as much as possible, we try and revert that to be a little bit more human-centered, designed around the customer or the service user.

Um I think that court systems and cook county is no different from this, tend to be radically extremely um extremely uh system centered, extremely organization centered, as opposed to being uh litigant centered or survivor centered.

Um and that's what we found as well.

So one of the things here is that we know that burden of proof can be difficult, uh, especially in these cases, but particularly um one thing that was challenging was that it depends a lot on the judge you have in front of you, but also the type of court you're in.

And so the quote here is from uh from a DB support staff that talks about civil and criminal cases run on completely different timelines and evidence rules.

That might be obvious to those who are understanding of the legal system, the difference between criminal court and civil court, but for those who show up and are just happening to be in front of one judge or another judge, that is not always obvious, and um and is is another kind of challenge in in navigating the system.

Uh the second point here is that it's really complicated to know what the hell is going on.

And so the the finding here is a court feels like a theater where survivors don't know their roles and flooding their lines might result in a case dismissal.

This is uh a really interesting insight that came from the survivor quote that said it's felt like a playbook, because everyone knows it's coming after, but I have no idea what's happening.

Um, this goes back to what Kelly spoke about in terms of narrative, like having to have a strong narrative walk in the room, knowing what you need to say, knowing what you need to kind of lean into is is a challenge for survivors, and it's a challenge for anyone who's advocating or kind of navigating the system.

And the last point here on the core processes being uh system centered is that many of the functions we identify were very rigid.

Um so one of the things we heard is that hearing dates were set without consulting the survivor.

We also saw processes of paperwork that you can only file in certain situations or certain times, or even that process looked different depending on who you're engaging with, or some kind of random factors that were not standardized.

Um Leeds clerk that we spoke with mentioned that child and even asking for time off work affects the art disability to tend the hearings because those hearings, if you don't show up to them, the case gets dismissed.

And that's a main primary reason for case dismissals.

Um and it is something that is outside of uh the control of uh of folks who are showing up and asking for emergency overduction.

All right, the third team uh is um survivor services.

And so here it's the survivor resources are difficult to identify and delivered inconsistently.

Um and so the point here is that access to services depends on on prior knowledge, your ability to understand what you have available to you, what rights you have, and be able to ask for them.

Um sometimes they might kind of come up to you, but oftentimes you need to go and request them.

Um explicitly ask for the for help and knowing I guess what help to be asking for.

Um we had a uh someone from the state's attorney's office who works with with the survivors tell us about this great program with with Uber.

However, one of the challenges was that they have this program, they have this contract, but but their line is that victims must inform us before getting transportation.

Um but if you don't know that there is an Uber available for you, it is hard to ask for, it's hard to assume that you're gonna have an Uber pay for for you.

So we can do more in terms of um uh communicating these abilities services.

Second point here is the availability and level of support from advocates varies based on funding, eligibility rules, and the applicate's availability.

Um we saw we one of the legal advocates we spoke to in our courts by visits, we asked what's the hardest part of this job.

And keep in mind that these are people whose job it is to be the first kind of person that somebody who's seeking an emergency order protection interacts with.

This is somebody in front of you over and over again, time and time again, who is distressed, who's stressed, who is potentially entering into a life-changing moment.

Um, and so we asked what is the hardest part of your job, assuming it was going to be the heaviness of these situations time and time again.

But actually, what they replied with was that they have a screening process and the need for qualifying whether that person receives services or not, whether they're going to help them or not is the was the hardest part of the job.

And that really just speaks, I think, to the bureaucracy of this moment that even even this advocate who's here to actually be the compassionate and the and the um uh the kind of mentor through this process, their their toughest part of the job is to figure out do I help this person or not.

And we did see uh in kind of smaller court systems where that people were kind of going above and beyond.

And so it's it's uh again, you're depending on who you're getting in front of and what how busy they are as to how much support you're gonna get.

And then uh the third point here on survivor services is we saw legal aid, which is critically important, um, but it was inconsistently available.

Um and so survivors have a choice of do they represent themselves in this moment, or do they come back and uh have more information.

Um what we identified uh ourselves was that uh the legal aid office, um, free legal aid office was available Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays for PRs in the in the afternoon.

Um, but even though most cases come in on Mondays, and regardless of whether most cases come in Mondays, people are coming in before and after that time on Tuesdays, Wednesday, Thursdays, they're also coming in on some people do Fridays.

Um here that there's a quote from a frontline staff uh member who said legal aid are often a capacity so often.

Okay, in their professional opinion, they said I would say about half of people are representing themselves because of the how busy the office is.

Um who are showing up at the right times, only half of them get served.

Okay, yeah, the fourth theme, four or five, is on communication.

And uh what we identified and what we observed is that court communication can be cold, dismissive, and erotic.

And I think these are terms that are you know somewhat unfortunate for somebody who again is in this in this moment of trying to find shelters, safety, and civility.

Um I think the a key point here is to say that the can be is doing a lot because as Kelly alluded to for earlier, uh we we identified at a kind of what is high volume uh uh where there's where there's a lot of the infrastructure is not is kind of designed for for counter type service as opposed to compassionate service.

Um we saw really different um dynamics, and so it it can be called indismissive and erotic.

We also know that there are people who work in our court system that are also caring and have time and go above and beyond, and so it is worth calling out both.

But uh ideally that is the norm as opposed to um as opposed to it being uh not the norm.

Um and a survivor talked about when you come into a court setting, you feel intimidated, and you know, will they look at me like a statistic?

Uh yeah.

So the second point here is that the the process for survivors who have not been through this process before, it's quite unpredictable in terms of what what what it is, what's about the three in front of you.

Um we we really follow the emergency order protection um pathway and know that there's many different um kind of jumping off points into other parentage, guardianship, anything else like that, and so they everyone kind of finds their own path.

Um but what we found is that uh survivors need to depend on on advocates or court clerks or deputies uh to navigate both their process and even just the courthouse, as Kelly alluded to earlier, which is often kind of confusing to navigate.

Um and those are people speaking from very different perspectives and with very different um information themselves.

And so you're gonna get very different, they're they're not speaking from the same hymn book, even if you do ask multiple people who are different roles what what uh what to expect.

Um legal advocate we spoke with mentioned that the most important thing is making sure making sure that survivors, when they walk out of the courtroom, understand what the paperwork of the court documents are and know where to find their court date.

That is it.

They know those two things.

Um but they actually have a booklet of of of dozens of sheets of paper, and it's hard to know where to even start winning it on.

And the last thing is the paperwork is daunting.

It's unclear what to expect in the process, especially, and I just mentioned this if multi if uh if uh survivors have multiple filings.

Uh, one of the things we that we saw when we were um in one of the courthouses was that uh when people enter the court, they are kind of slickened into the uh the clerk's office, and that's the kind of the main starting point.

You line up, you go to a counter.

Um, at that counter, uh, when you mentioned that you're here for domestic violence, you are actually rerouted downstairs to to go to a domestic violence office.

We went downstairs, we couldn't find that office very easily.

The eventually we found the office.

We went in, we got the paperwork for the emergency order protection, and that was a nice environment and it was a nice interaction, but they do not do the paperwork for for parentage, which is also part of the case that we were trying to we were following through.

Um and so we had to go back up to the clerk's office, back up the stairs, back into the line, back into uh into that process to get there, um, back to the same person again, who was a little bit peeved that we were back again.

And then to the advocate's office, which again is over by the clerk's office for putting out the order protection, but they would not support the other documents.

So there's all these very rigid processes and pathways that's just not streamlined, and it's very it's very hard to know when you're it's not as it's not kind of obvious to you what why these things are different.

Okay, I'm not there.

Can you just explain when you said parentage that was related to a domestic relations case?

That's why you had to go back up a parentage case is associated with domestic relationships, just so don't understand, because that's not a term they've been using regularly.

Oh okay.

Um do you want to say that's your microphone?

I just keep that um we're on the last the last thing.

Um but this one is like priorities, and it's it's maybe uh somewhat different um to the other four.

But what we identified time and time again is that securing housing, finding safety, um, parenting and maintaining work are often more urgent priorities than pursuing court action.

And uh I think that's important to reflect on in the in this process because we were really looking at a narrow kind of perspective of the court system and that being the center of the domestic violence um perspective, but it is much broader than that, and uh even one of the the quotes here um in front of us is uh when uh you know the court the the point here is that the legal process does not resolve the broader safety and stability challenges, all this.

Um and uh survivor who showed up to and uh got an emergency order protection and was waiting for the hearing in three weeks' time, said, Will I be around on June 19th?

Will I will I still be breathing?

Will I be safe between now and then?

Um and the reality is that we're going through a bureaucracy process, but there's a whole life happening in and around this that uh um that we need to kind of factor in as much as possible.

That learned experience.

And the the second point here is that truly keeping employment, keeping legal status, keeping kids, other other kind of factors um affect whether people continue with the legal process.

So oftentimes there will be a uh a law enforcement call-out, um, there will be maybe even an order protection filed, but three weeks later, um uh they lead that hearing is on date that they can take off from work, or they can skip out from picking up their kids, or whatever it is.

And so it's very it's it's common that life gets in the way of continuing the process.

And we did hear at the start that it takes six, seven or eight times oftentimes for people to actually see through that process.

Um then finally uh there's another reason for people not always following through this process is that there is this cycle of abuse where people start off with tension in the relationship, it builds to actual abuse, and then we have the honeymoon phase, um, which is where um the the abuser is is represented and is apologizing and is is showering a lot of love.

It's a kind of common cycle for for um for these actuations situations, but that also coincides roughly with the timeline for the three-week hearing.

Um and so often by the time you get to the point of showing up, going back to court and testing your partner, you either are not overly interested in going through a core process, and so you dismiss the case, and or you have rekindled with your partner, and again, obviously you're not interested in um causing that uh creating instability at home.

Um this is another another channel, most channels to kind of keep in mind that there is this cycle of an emotional uh journey that often is a cycle.

All right, we are through with the themes and the findings.

Uh we do have opportunity areas recommendations.

Um, and then I think the one point that um Carmen had made too, I just wanted to clarify.

We looked at criminal and civil court, we didn't not um look as closely at things at in the domestic domestic relations like parentage and things like that.

So really it only came up as a matter of the type of paperwork that people needed, and we didn't really dive more deeply into some of those.

So we just wanted to be clear about where we did and didn't look.

Um but with our opportunity areas.

Um one of the ones that you heard a lot about is this the barriers to entry.

And so we were thinking that we have some simplified information and resources.

There is tons of information.

It is not that there is not a wealth of information available to you.

I think it's more a matter of after looking at 50 pages, you're kind of like, what's what are the top three things I really need to worry about or think about in my journey?

And so thinking about ways to kind of demystify the court process and literally saying at the EOP you need this for that initial one, for the next court hearing you need these things.

What's a kind of visual map that we can give people to really help them be prepared for each step of the way?

And then developing high school education programs about healthy relationships and how to avoid the cycle of abuse.

So I went last night to look at what CPS does now.

And they literally is pre-K through 12.

But a lot of it in rightly so is focused more on sex and reproductive health for many many good reasons.

But there's nothing really around like what are the other relationships in your life and where might that cycle of abuse be occurring?

And one of the things that we learned at Skokie Courthouse is their big cases that they're looking at a large percentage of them are parents being abused by their children.

And if you can imagine how hard it is to go to court for your, you know, husband, girlfriend, boyfriend, whomever, think about your child.

That's you know, just heart wrenching.

And so there isn't really anything that helps us sort of prepare for these kinds of journeys and even recognize like, oh, I'm in the cycle of abuse, and this is what's getting ready to happen next, and the only way you're going to step out of it is to recognize that you're in it.

So how can we sort of augment what's already being shared with kids younger so that by the time that they are getting into relationships and getting married, they recognize some of the red flags and don't fall into those relationships.

Also developing materials and staff protocols that connect survivors with local peer groups or you know, survivor-led groups as well.

Um, I work a lot with women in re-entry, and I have to say the peer program that we created where women that have been incarcerated are helping other women that have been through incarceration is so powerful because if you haven't been through it, you don't have as much credibility, right?

And so it's interesting because some of the women that we interviewed now have been survivors over different periods of time, and they're like, I'm so strong now, just wait.

You know, if someone tried to do that same thing now, I'd be so much more strong because I have my network in place.

I know some of the things I can do to protect myself.

So, how can we kind of create more of that structure and make certain that the resources a lot of times they're available and people just don't even know they're there, especially if they self-navigated through the process.

Um, conducting a design review, sort of taking some of the learnings and strategies about a lot of different programs at work.

Um, you know, other ones that people are frustrated with.

How do you and I know that there's some groups that get together on a quarterly basis and talk about like what have we learned, what can we do about it?

Sort of taking that and scaling it and sharing some of that across different courthouses so that people are constantly learning from one another and identifying when people have tried things and they work.

Um, and then the the survivor-led initiatives, um, helping with the court system navigation, and then developing some internal clarity about who sort of owns different protocols and when you can and can't change it so that you don't put uh survivors at risk across the different courthouses and overall court system.

Um, also within survivor services, evaluating the resource gaps.

We've sort of taken a crack at some of the ones that are sitting on the surface and that we learned about through the do through the two different courts and the interviews that we did and secondary research research that we did, and so kind of continuing to build on that body of knowledge and working with advocate providers to ensure consistent and holistic resources are available and making certain that those are equitable.

We know that funding can have a huge impact on what's available to people, and right now funding is can be especially challenging.

And so, how do we help to make certain that things are equitable across different courthouses and locations, and then creating an opportunity for those who are self-directed to reconnect with advocates and other survivors services when they're exiting the court system?

They made a decision early on when they got their paperwork, like, okay, I think I can handle this on my own, but then as you come to the final hearing, having an opportunity then to say, okay, what could I do now?

What could I what services could I use that would be helpful at this stage of the game of the process?

Um, and then communication, sort of implementing this care-centered communication strategy that has you know a kind of softer tone of the materials, compassionate communication.

One of the things we heard a lot about was DV training.

Um, there is some and police departments have been receiving DV training and other professionals in the space, continuing to build upon that so that training is accessible and there's recommendations to think about ways to reduce the emotional labor of accessing the court system, and then developing a kind of what to expect playbook and guide.

One of the things that we saw outside of the courthouse in Skokie were like this is what a completed form looks like.

Not taking away the personal narrative of it, but just making certain you put the right information in the right place.

Because one of the things that sort of shown through studies is that people that do have an advocate or are working with representation are 15 to 20% more likely to make it through the whole order of protection process because they didn't flub up any of the paperwork or put the wrong thing in the wrong place, and they always showed up for their court times because they made you know you had someone making certain that they were there.

So how do we build on that by creating more of a what to expect process and then improving the case communications to ensure that hearing dates you know are communicated ahead of time?

Um they are told the date at their court hearing, and some may receive an email, but just making certain that that's even the the channel of communication that they regularly have access to.

It might have been nervous to give their email address to someone because their emails monitored.

So, how do we find ways to help people know when, where, and how to show up?

Um what were you gonna say?

And ideally, they'll need to alter that time for the hearing.

Yeah.

If it's a date that you can't make it, or making certain more people feel comfortable or have access to virtual court dates when at Skokie they talked about 15% of the court hearings were virtual.

Um, I'm not certain if you got a number at Markham, but they did say that there since COVID, there's been an increase.

Um, and for people that have child care and other challenges, just getting them to feel comfortable with what would a virtual court hearing even be like, because a lot of people are lucky enough to not be on Zoom every day of their lives.

Um, and and and that might be intimidating for them.

And then the last thing is around what John talked about of like, you know, here's life writ large, and then here's your court case that you're trying to juggle with all the other dozens of things that you're juggling in your life.

So for as much as possible, ensuring services and resources are made available available to survivors, regardless of if they seek court protection or not, and regardless of their filing state.

And one of the things that I found a previous uh work that was done was you know, what's available 24-7?

Um, and then what's available sort of within you know the 10 to 2, you know, time of the court at the courthouse that legal services are available.

So, how do you help people sort of navigate um resources that aren't always 24-7 available?

Um, and then also developing alternatives for those who are unlikely to leave their relationship, um, such as a non-mandated PAIP programs.

Do you want to talk about what PAIP programs are?

Yeah, these are programs for for people who may cause harm and to or who have caused harm uh for um essentially understanding what that understanding better what that um what has been happening.

Oftentimes they have the perspective that they are the victim and understanding the um and taking more countable actions, and these programs have proven to be uh quite effective in terms of changing behavior change, and ultimately we can uh one of the things that we we talked about in the past is that uh individual abusers tend to move through a lot of uh the victims or survivors, um, and uh if we can focus on adults also addressing that root cause, uh the fact there is use in a inner in our in our communities as opposed to just maybe put away from abusers.

I think we can do both.

So this is a uh these programs tend to be mandated by a criminal court and they don't really exist a whole lot outside of uh that mandated uh process, and we do know from from the network uh the D people do call the Illinois DV hotline uh asking worry that they might be somebody who could cause harm and asking is there any way they can go to uh aside from anger management to um enter services uh could help them not cause harm and keep their comments together.

And then um revisiting housing or other options for survivors who are seeking safe shelter, a lot of times housing, as you can imagine in Chicago's overcrowded, and some of the advocates that we spoke with are like, oh yeah, we we have our ways of like when we know things are full, we have a few strings we can pull, things that we can do, but it's really up to their individual creativity to find the housing, and so how do we continue to identify opportunities to help people seeking shapes safe shelter from their and particularly for the 48 hours around the serving of the EOP and then even after the court hearings as well, someone who was maybe contesting this could be angry, and so where when and how do we continue to provide sort of safe shelter within that.

Um, and particularly for the 48 hours around the serving of the EOP, and then even after the court hearings as well, someone who was maybe contesting this could be angry, and so where when and how do we continue to provide sort of safe shelter within that?

And one of the things that we thought about as far as opportunity areas as well is um the judge who handles both criminal and civil cases said, you know, in criminal court, I can mandate that someone goes through a program like the program that John mentioned.

I don't have that in civil civil court, and so if we can't mandate it, are there incentives or other ways that we can kind of reinforce the power of going through those types of courses for those who might be likely to do harm to others?

Because it really isn't until they get into criminal court that someone can actually mandate that.

Um so those were just some areas that we wanted to um share with you around opportunities um to change, bring new um solutions to the space, and then the last thing we wanted to um we'll talk about next steps, but I just wanted to see if there's any questions anybody has around any of the content.

Okay, thank you.

Yeah, we have a couple questions, but what a fantastic report.

Thank you for all of the data that you collected and separated out.

Just um was any of his data separated by age group.

No, it's a great way to think about it.

I mean, the only sort of anecdotal information that we got around that was around in certain courts like Skokie, they're worried about parents and children in the city, it's sort of different.

So when you say age groups, are you thinking about um both sides of user and victim?

Okay, yeah.

What do you what do you think?

What do you think that that would what insight do you think that would be?

Well, first of all, I mean, you also mentioned like educating the youth um in a high school program, and I know there's uh been conversations about how do we get to that.

So, what age what we would get from it, or I think it would just show where we need to educate different groups as to what the services are and where they are and how they can access them, even if it's younger, or even if it's just you know, women with children of a certain age, it just would probably dive in more as to all the other barriers that you also identified, like you know, some people don't want to come because they don't have a babysitter, and you know, what age are those people, so it it would just might help um just how to really target and laser focus where to go and who to talk to.

Yeah, we don't we don't have I mean we the the numbers we talked to is it's not serving, it's it's it's qualitative, so it's we spoke to very few people, so you can see this one or two that we it would it would be anecdotal almost.

But I do want to say two things.

One is that when we spoke, one of the things that we identified and when this kind of subside suburbs was that how shows up in the court system there's actually quite different from what shows up downtown.

Um, and there it tends to be the idea of domestic violence is almost more frequently inside of families, and so you have um people who are there when we asked for what resources if you had a magic wand, what resources you want down here?

Housing actually wasn't the top of the list because people were more stable in their communities and could go to somewhere else, um, could go to our friends, could go to something else.

Uh but actually what was what was really coming up a lot was it's my brother's attacking or it's something like that.

And so I think there's that starts up at all sorts of ages, but that's that's kind of from youth upwards.

Um, and that's why we're thinking about getting into schools and having kind of talks about abuse in the city turning that you had a lot of more people who were um coming into the city and were otherwise isolated from community, and so housing is the number one thing because they don't necessarily have a second place to go.

Um, so we kind of we had kind of anecdotes like that.

But I think one of the things is uh people who are older uh tend to have a little bit more stability in their community and in their sense of a sense of place, right?

Um, and so have uh potentially have kind of so if we're if we're looking at where we go, I think we're targeting those who are most vulnerable, and an age is gonna be one of those vulnerabilities.

That's good.

Yeah, that's great.

That's great intel.

Um, just the other thing you mentioned about the DR cases um versus the DV cases.

So, do you did you get anything where you have a percentage of where they overlap?

No.

No.

Well, yeah.

So no, so they did more of a qualitative, they did more of a quality.

Yeah, so they spoke when everyone they possibly could.

The data they started were from the people in the system that shared it, but that would be more data would be from the clerk's office.

Right.

So you know where I'm going with that.

So that's going to be for the next part.

But okay, that's great.

And then the other thing you mentioned about the virtual hearings more so at SCO key, and you didn't have data at Markham.

Is there a reason there's no data from the Markham?

Um, so we I think we and we didn't we don't have definitive information from either.

We do know that that they they have virtual uh in Markham as well, but we just didn't ask.

We didn't gather that information of what's the percentage breakdown between uh virtual, like there's one court for each, so presumably it's close to 50, but I I don't want to say that.

So that's something we could dive into more like it's we can find it out.

It's not like we can't find it out.

Okay, thank you so much.

This is fantastic.

So telling on everybody.

Well, you've given us a whole bunch more things to look at.

I love it.

That's great.

That's great.

Okay.

Yes.

Anyway, anyone else?

Yes, I do have I have to have a couple of things.

First of all, I just wanna commend you on this presentation.

Thank you.

It's very thorough.

You have a lot of good recommendations here.

Thank you for putting that together.

Um, I really liked how you addressed on one of your uh recommendations is putting together of what to expect um document for res for people.

Um, because it's like you said, it's it's very intimidating process and hard to navigate their debt.

It's um it is it is challenging for that for those who may not be able to know how to navigate that.

So I really like that.

I wanna explore that more.

Um, and the other thing is you touched it on the you touched on the virtual briefings, not the virtual briefings, but virtual attending court virtually.

Um the pandemic has changed a lot on how we are approaching our our day-to-day now.

And I am curious, I think you did say just wanted to clarify.

Was it 15% of those?

Yeah, one five at Skokie.

One 15%.

15%.

Okay.

So that's how much have attended since COVID or the pandemic has started.

So the question we asked the judge was kind of on an ongoing basis.

What percentage are virtual?

So that's kind of a current number, 15%, uh, tend to be virtual on a day-to-day basis, yeah, or a weekly basis.

Okay.

Um I do want to see if we can look more specific in that because I think that does help a lot of folks who don't can't miss work to take day off work for attending court purposes.

And then the last thing you touched on was which was very important is the housing component.

Um, and how there must be some housing assistance for those after 48 hours.

Can you talk a little bit more about that?

Um, and how that's such an important need for that.

Like, can you share a specific story or or something that you have come across on why that's so important to have that?

I can I can talk to that.

Um it's it's because of the that the barrier to it going into the court in the first place is what do I do tonight?

Um, so I mean, ideally we would have the ability for for and a major reason for people not showing up is because they don't know kind of what's gonna happen tomorrow, right?

They don't know how are they going to replace what they have, you know.

It's it's maybe it's the it's a it's a type of stability they currently have, even if it's not the most comfortable hospitalities, and to rely on this the state um for taking away often the the person who can as housing or whatever.

I mean, we have housing laws um that protect them, but then necessarily they don't necessarily know that they maybe didn't sign the lease that that says the the the housing law protections.

Um and so part of part of providing uh or recommending that idea around the 48 hours is because that is the timeline where it will be served, and they will go so their partner's gonna find out and so you're you can imagine that there's that stress of you go to the court, you do the thing as at some point of sheriff, you know, someone's going from a sheriff's office or whatever to serve your partner.

We've told them where to go, and you're kind of waiting for your phone to blow up, um, and you're thinking, do I get home now?

Drop some like what do I do?

And where like there's a fear to that, which is a little bit different than registering for housing and eventually getting housing that maybe a few weeks later, where you have already those are all the levels of priority, but there's there's a certain level of of that is a huge barrier, and can we be talking about that emotional moment?

And and do we find in these circumstances children are involved?

In a lot of cases, yeah.

Yeah, okay.

So that was the other thing I was going to bring up is they're not just thinking about themselves frequently, but also their family and their kids, where where will they go and who can accommodate all of us?

And there's places like family promise that can take on families.

I mean, that's what they're focused on, but you know, it's still very limited resources.

And actually, you had your hand up.

Yeah.

Did you want to?

Yeah, on the previous slide.

Can you just go to the mic, please?

Thank you.

Actually, it was part of the research.

So I was coming from a second thing.

Like from another condition on domestic women's non-collation of domestic women.

I think we are used to the board except that then hotline had the most request for housing.

So most of the calls were uh about getting housing services.

Is there any data tracking that on how many calls daily?

Is that the report has the data in it?

So we came across it to a secondary visit.

But we could get that data pretty easily.

Everyone from the network nodding.

Yeah, so we'll get that and share it with everyone.

Thank you.

And um, and and my final is I I want to give a special recognition to our Chicago City Clerk, Anna Valencia, who is joining us here today.

Um, thank you.

Yes, no, thank you for being here.

You you have been with us since the very beginning, engaged in this, and I know how important it is that you advocate for women and children.

Um we wanna give you the floor.

You're more than welcome to sit here and and and uh address the floor.

And if you have anything that you'd like to say to us, please, we we'd like to hear from you.

She's um been with us from the very beginning, and she signed down to our resolution for me, this task force.

So wanna thank her and uh for being here with us.

Good morning.

Good morning.

What an honor to turn it on.

Yeah, yeah, there's a little button there.

And then at City Hall, they control it.

So we're almost there, we're not that fancy yet.

It's on there.

Yes.

Uh good morning, thank you, Commissioner Donna Meller.

Thank you, Albert, for allowing me to be part of this.

Uh Steve and Lori from my office have been at all the meetings and kept me informed.

But this is something near and dear to my heart as well.

We have the city key card, the minus slide card, the first government ID here in Chicago that's sort of the lock of our domestic violence survivors.

And one of the things we heard quite a bit when we were getting the program back in 2018, is that when folks were fleeing, often they leave all of their documents behind, and they didn't have enough documents to get a state ID or driver's license to get on their feet.

So we've seen the through the city key people have been able to get temporary housing, turn on a utility, get their children in Chicago public pools, pick up a prescription, um, and just help get our get their families back on their feet.

So I want to thank you all.

Uh, just a couple of reactions report I saw.

I think with us being in power, and I see a majority women for here at student hopefully is the majority of women city council over on this side.

But uh who knows, but one of the things that we have is the power uh to make the changes, and I think one of the things that I was walking through is the power of technology that we can embrace since we've seen it work during COVID.

So not only the 15% virtual, I also want to think about what would it look like to talk to the clerk's office on e-form if there's something that you can start your paperwork as simple as an e-form.

Partnering with the Chicago libraries have wonderful digital navigators.

They also have very wonderful bilingual digital navigators that can help uh folks walk through that process online, and if they could at least start it online, that might be able to get it moving faster, take off the barrier of transportation.

I also think that government we have to look at our hours, they don't always work for people.

So, what would it look like to do regional hubs across the county, um, even at our courthouses on a Saturday hour are offering sometime?

Now I hear a lot about overtime.

Yes, overtime is a big thing, but you can manage that.

We do that with mobile city hall, and we pay maybe $15,000 a year to be at eight different Saturdays throughout the year, 10 to one for about four of our asking employees to be there selling city stickers.

So it is manageable with dollars, you can find a way to be more flexible to allow families the opportunity to maybe come into a church or more welcoming place that they can then do their paperwork, and have child care provided, maybe even partner with an organization that allows child care at that same time.

So I just think we have to think about doing things differently and bureaucracy, paperwork, the way that we used to do things don't always work for what happens now.

And so I think as we have the power and the reins, we need to use all of those things to change how government should be and not what it was of the past.

And lastly, I just want to commend you all for taking this together.

I think when I saw that diagram of we go here and then you go here.

That is overwhelming to me as a regular part or as a city official that knows everything.

I would not even know the first step to taking on that very scary journey.

Um also along with having their own kids too that are you're providing for.

So any way that we can take that on as the clerk's office.

We've done a lot on modernizing our own technology processes.

We it's a very big undertaking, but it's not impossible.

So we'd be happy from our end to help carry that forward when you're talking about next types of implementation, however, we can help organize that or you know, give feedback on that processes for operations.

We'd love to help.

So thank you again.

Thank you for everyone being here, and your work is meaningful.

Thank you.

So thank you, City Clerk Anna Valencia.

That is incredible the feedback and input that we need to take in consideration.

And again, thank you to you and your team.

They have been here every single meeting, every single meeting here at the county building, as well as the working groups that we've had.

So your presence and your collaboration is very much appreciated.

So thank you.

Yes, thank you.

We just wanted to uh thank everyone for really great observations and questions.

Um, one person that I did not mention earlier who's joined us virtually is Barbara Baver Perel.

She's been also helping us with all of the research and uh putting together the findings, and so I just want to acknowledge her contribution to the team.

Thank you, Kelly.

Um, well, I just want to say thank you.

Um they uh we we announced this at the first meeting, but we're really lucky to have all these amazing partners who signed on, not just to help us with this in a really excellent fashion, but also to do so pro bono.

Um so I just want to say thank you so much.

They put in so much time and effort, they talked to everyone who would um uh routine with them, and the report is really extensive and it's extremely helpful for us going forward.

Um so thank you, Kelly and John, and Akshay and Biramby.

So I'm not really presentation great.

Thank you all so much.

Um I think we answered all the questions.

So now we are ready to adjourn.

Um, and we will be following up with all the information from all the working groups, putting together a report, as we've said throughout this entire process over the last several months.

This was um a door opener.

This was a way to get the information um started, not finished.

So we have a lot to work, a lot of work to still do, and we really appreciate everyone who put so many hours into this, and Katie and Carmen.

Thank you so much for coordinating and getting the groups involved.

This is really invaluable information that we have.

It's a gold line of information that we are going to be able to utilize and mine and actually build upon for many, many more years, I will say.

Um, so um, with this being our last working group meeting, uh, thank you all again for your participation and your collaboration.

And do you want to say anything?

Yeah, okay.

I do want to say a few words.

Thank you.

Um, you know, as we wrap up this task force, I do want to thank my friend and partner in these efforts, Commissioner Dunno.

I want to say thank you, who will be taking the fight for women's health and safety to the halls of Congress next year.

We're all very lucky I have her advocating for us, and I look forward to continuing this work with you.

Um, I also want to thank our other Cook County commissioners who have been attending these board meetings as well.

Um, Commissioner Bridget Degman, Commissioner Alma Anaya, Commissioner Um Gaynor, Terrace Damps, and Dr.

McClaskill.

And I also want to thank all of the aldermen as well, the city council who have joined us and have reached out for help.

Um, it's been an honor to work with with all of you.

Um, and to the county leaders and the to the city of Chicago department heads and all of our state leaders who met with us and who have really dedicated their staff and to committing to helping this task force.

I just really want to say thank you, every single one of you.

I also want to say that from this very beginning, this work has been survivor-led.

And to the survivors who have shared their stories with us in our meetings and to those who have reached out to me personally.

I want to especially thank a young woman who I have much admiration and respect, Sarah Brown.

She's here.

Sarah Brown, thank you.

Thank you.

Yes, baby on this class.

Thank you, mom, Brown.

Thank you.

I want to thank your partnership and the countless hours that you have committed to our things, task force.

So thank you.

This is just the very beginning, everyone.

We we began in January.

Since January to today, domestic murders in the city of Chicago have decreased.

52%.

And we're very committed to continue this work together, and we're gonna create a unified transparent system that's going to protect women, their children, and all our vulnerable communities.

These um we're going to have a city council committee meeting in July, July 9th, to hear more about the recommendations that we have all gathered through these task forces.

So stay tuned for that.

And we're going to continue this work for phase two of the task force in the fall.

So there's just much more to come.

But I want to give a big sincere appreciation and gratitude to Katie Dunn.

You're welcome.

She's been very great partner in all of this.

I want to thank you.

Thank you for all your hard work and working with us and making this possible.

We could not have done the work without it.

So thank you.

Thank you all.

And I I just want to also reiterate that I all of the people who came to speak.

We appreciate all of your input.

And this is what makes a difference.

There is power in one voice.

And I do want to also again shout out Sarah Brown, who has been advocating behind the scene and became a force of nature with Katie and Carmen.

And this is what it takes when you care about something and you want to do something about it.

And we can do something about it.

So Alder Woman Tavares, thank you for taking dips to the city council and getting all your colleagues to have unanimous support for this issue because we see it in every neighborhood and across all of Cook County and literally across the entire country.

It's not just something that's happening here in the state of Illinois.

And so we hope that this will also be something duplicatable for other counties or municipalities to take on and spread the word around.

Although this started as a domestic violence task force for women, I'm glad to have the male participation to highlight the issues that also affect men in this situation as well.

And the children.

So I do want to, you know, highlight that we will be continuing on.

We're having a domestic relations task force, uh, not task force, domestic relations hearing next week here at the county.

And that is to hide that that's going to be hopefully a bridge where we'll able to we'll be able to coordinate what's happened from the information gathered from domestic violence court and see what we need to put pieces in place for domestic relations court because there is overlap in many instances.

And so we want to continue that on.

I know that we'll continue to collaborate and partner and what that looks like.

And I do want to thank all of the agencies who've been a part of this and putting presentations together, making us aware of the resources that you have at the county level.

We can talk about, you know, what we can do about that as we go into budget hearings and the need for advocating for more resources.

Um, you know, some people were getting on my case a little bit like, you know, it's not just money.

Well, we can't do anything without resources.

So we do hope that we're able to put our money where our mouth is in that sense and make sure that if they're added needed benefits that we need in these departments that we can advocate for those.

One thing I always say about budgets is there's a budget, and then there's people who advocate for things to be in the budget.

If we're not discussing what we need to be in the budget, that's where the resources don't get reallocated and moved around.

So let's make sure that we are talking about that.

I know we have them, but I'm going to make sure we're talking about it in a dollar and sense standpoint and what that is going to look like in impacting lives.

And it's really been my honor to work with all of you.

They have been driving this glass the entire time.

So thank you both for all the work that you did every single day.

We literally have been working on this every single day for the last six months.

So thank you for making sure that we're on point, and not only that, that when we hear the numbers decrease the moment to RS that there's been a decrease.