Good afternoon, everyone.

Welcome to the community culture committee meeting for Thursday, August the 15th.

Let's stand for the Pledge of Allegiance.

Let me offer a quick correction.

Today is Thursday, April 16th.

We have two presentations in front of our committee today.

The first presentation is from Director of the United Away, Ken Odom.

Welcome, Ken.

That's working.

Good afternoon, Council members.

I really appreciate the opportunity to sit down with you today and talk about something that is close to all of our hearts, which is supporting the working families in our family who are unable to afford a basic cost of living.

We're all pretty familiar with the term Alice asset limited income constrained but employed, but I appreciate the invitation from Councilmember Shackelford to come back and refresh.

The great news is you're seeing the data that was most recently released.

The really wonderful news is that we're updating this data on an annual basis now.

We will be releasing the new set of data here in the next couple of months.

So bear in mind that the data you're seeing today will likely change as we as we roll out the the next uh the next report.

Um all of the data you're seeing today is based on 2023 data from the federal government for the most part.

So you're looking at data sources like the American Community Survey, the Census, uh Bureau of Labor and Statistics, uh really important information.

Clarifying item before I get started.

How much time do I have?

As much as you need, Will.

Don't say that, Councilmember.

You have you have a simple time.

If we get to a place I will get you there.

I'll start moving forward, yes.

Out of respect for my colleagues who also want to present.

So thank you.

I'll I'll do a I'll do a relatively short version of this, and then I'm always available for additional questions.

You could member thank you.

So a little bit of background, the Alice Report is a product of uh of United Way Network.

So United Way of Frederick County is a local United Way that is uh we're independent, a 501 CO3 organization, but we're a part of an international network of United Ways.

The real value of that is that we're learning from each other's experiences and in our communities and sharing information and projects uh across the network.

One example of that is United Way of Frederick County's Ride United Network, which actually started through United Way Worldwide in Alexandria, Virginia, and rolled out to local United Ways.

And today, as we sit here today, uh United Way of Frederick County um and its many partners and two one one from Mental Health Association are providing up between 600 and 1,000 rides a month for free to our Alice families in our community.

Another project uh that that is created out actually out of the United Ways of New Jersey and shared throughout the co through throughout the the network is the ALIS report.

It's a great example of um interunited way sharing and communication.

So the Alice Report is a report of working families who are unable to afford a basic cost of living.

Among the things we have learned through this report is that our Alice families are in every community.

They're in every city, they're in every demographic, they're in every age group.

It's all a matter of what the concentration may be in those individual groups and communities.

The nice thing about the ALS report is it's broken down to the individual community.

So uh in in down to the county level, so really local level, and that's fairly unique among these these analyses.

We also have data that's down to the city in many regards.

And we're able to supplement that data.

We'll get into this in a little bit with our own research and findings at United Way of Frederick County through our pro programmatic uh outputs like Ride United Network or a pathway to home ownership or Vita.

We're able to demonstrate that in our case, what I'll show a bit later is the distribution of Chromebooks that we did two years ago to 5,500 households, many of whom were in the City of Frederick.

So Alice households struggle to afford a basic cost of living, they live paycheck to paycheck, and then often even then are unable to really make the ends meet.

We're going to talk a little bit about Alice.

We're going to talk about the Alice uh household survival budget, and I'll go into a little more detail.

We're going to talk about uh what it is to mean financial survival, and we're going to talk a little bit about the Alice Essentials Index.

We'll get to that towards towards the end.

The buy-in, if you will, the the organization of the Alice report is actually by state.

So the uh the United Ways of Maryland band together and um help produce the Alice Report.

Uh and then we're able to roll that out into our individual communities as we see fit.

I'm delighted to report that Frederick County and certainly the City of Frederick within Frederick County has been among the most assertive and most widely adopted Alice reports in the country, especially among smaller communities.

When the Alice report is introduced as a key performance index by the county executive, that raises attention in the Alice network.

So we're able to look at the uh at the state of Maryland, of which there is about 29 percent of family or 39 percent of families are unable to afford a basic cost of living.

You're gonna see similar colors throughout the presentation.

Uh throughout the presentation, the color red will represent poverty.

Though that is the federally defined poverty level or below.

And then that yellowish-orange color uh will be above the poverty line, but below the basic cost of living or the survival threshold.

Typically, when we're talking about Alice, we're combining those two numbers.

And in this case, it's very easy math, it's 39 percent.

I want to hit the pause button there.

Any questions on that?

That's pretty important to understand.

Many of you have seen this before.

Thank you.

The darker colors would be those that would have the highest concentrations of Alice households.

The lighter colors represent those uh those counties that would have the lowest concentration of Alice households.

And what you will see generally speaking uh is that the uh Frederick County is among the lighter colors in in our heat map.

We in fact we are among the bottom quartile, the lowest uh percentage of Alice households in the state of Maryland.

I will caveat this is that this can fluctuate from from year to year pretty widely because those numbers can get pretty narrow uh between the low between those lower lower colors.

Uh for example, Howard County.

Do I have a pointer?

I guess you won't be able to see even if the uh most of you know where Howard County is, is the lightest color.

That is historically the lowest Alice percentage, the concentration in the state every single year.

On the other side of that, your more rural communities like Garrett, uh, excuse me, uh Allegheny County, Somerset, uh, and the eastern shore, there was those are always the darkest.

We have come down substantially over the over, especially over this last report, dropping from about 36 percent down down to a lighter color.

Councilmember Shackleford, you're not.

I'm sorry.

Warson County and Garrett County are similar, aren't they?

Uh they're a little darker.

Yes.

No, no, no, what I'm saying is they're the same.

So Garrett County is an interesting study because it's it's it's influenced by the McHenry Deep Creek Lake area, which is a concentration of wealth.

Um one county to the east uh Allegheny County doesn't really have that, and you see that represent in the color.

I should also note um now's a good time to note that Washington, D.C.

is also a member of the Alice network, so we have access to them, as is West Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Virginia.

So we can compare community community uh in a in a tri-state in the DC as well, BCA region as well.

So let's get into Frederick County.

At Frederick County, we are 33 percent Alice at this time.

So I'll get into a moment kind of how that has fluctuated over over time.

But we're looking at 33 percent, six percent poverty, 27 percent Alice.

So combined 33 percent.

35,000 households.

I'm gonna skip a couple, skip around a little bit here to save save some time.

So uh what you're looking at now is uh from year to year on the left, so going from 2023 to 2010, uh what the the actual real numbers of households look like over that period of time.

So ranging in 2023 from 6500 households and 2010, 4600 households.

So you're looking over 13 years, an increase of around 2,000 households in poverty.

In Alice, you're really looking uh looking at an even more meaningful change of of about 7,000 households.

And when you combine the two, uh you're really looking looking at a very significant increase in households over time.

I'm gonna I'm gonna get to that in a little little more detail.

One of the important things to note uh is that is that net change.

So you're looking at that uh between 2022 and 2023, an increase of 4,000 household excuse me, 400 households in poverty, 2,000 households that are ALES.

Uh so you're looking at 2,400 households or so uh that that are that are now that uh an increase of 2400 um households who are in Alice.

What's been an interesting finding is that for those households who that are not Alice, there was a net increase of one household.

Now, realistically, we know people are moving in and out of the county all the time, so this is a net increase of one.

So what that's really telling us is our Alice population is growing.

May I ask a question?

Yes.

Does that indicate that people who were above Alice are sliding down, or are these new families moving in?

Like where are those numbers coming from?

This is a persistent question because the the macroeconomics on this is very significant.

So it's difficult to tell from the data we have access to on now is this people moving in from other communities.

Uh is this a large migration out of the uh Frederick County of Alice households with more replacing it?

Is it people that were weren't Alice two years ago are Alice now?

That is a very tricky analysis, and frankly, we haven't cracked that nut yet.

So it's a very good question.

Keep it in mind because that's one that we're gonna eventually we're gonna have to better understanding.

The dynamic the flow dynamics here is uh is an outstanding question.

So this is your change over time.

Again, that 2010 to 2023 data.

And one of the things that we're finding is that we've been relatively consistent, relatively consistent.

So in 2010 at 32 percent, we're sitting here today at 33 percent, and there's been some volatility in there with peaks in 2016 and 2021 for obvious reasons in those years.

But if you look at the numbers on the top, 83 84,000 households total in 2010, and 107,000 households in 2023.

The real story here is the growth of population, because as a percentage, that percentage is a percentage of a larger population, which kind of leads back to that growth of Alice households over time is a really important point to make.

So while the percentage is staying relatively similar, the net growth of households is is of Alice households is quite significant, and that has significant impact on our city and county budgets, uh, our nonprofit community as well, who may be asked to do more with the same budgets.

So one of the other important lessons from the Alice report overall is the comparison between our survival budget in Frederick County and any other community compared to the federal poverty level, the federally defined federal poverty level.

So while that single individual budget, that survival budget may be 49,000, the Federal Government really says that you are in poverty if you're at 14,580 or less.

That gap is very significant.

And that gap changes from community to community.

While the federal poverty level is ubiquitous across the continental United States, we know inherently that the basic cost of living in one community is very different than the next.

It costs more to live in Manhattan, New York than it does in Cumberland, Maryland, for example.

In our case, for that single individual, it's a $20,000 gap.

I am not going to go into this in detail.

This is a resource for you, but we have the survival budget broken down in some detail of what the average family, what the average Alice budget would be for someone who is exactly what the basic cost of living is.

So that budget ranges from housing to child care to food, transportation, health care, technology down the list.

This is a resource to you.

That's where that $49,000 budget comes to comes from for a base cost of living for a single individual.

We also can break down the two, we have a broken down here for two adults and two children and a single senior.

However, we have the capacity to look up the survival budget for any size family type that you could possibly imagine.

And it does vary.

So a single survival budget for a senior is uh with a family with a senior in it may be different than that same family without the senior or with it with a with a um younger adult in there.

So it does vary from from um from makeup to makeup.

Yes.

So I'm seeing these rents here or mortgage or plus utilities.

And from what I'm seeing in ads and online that apartments are renting for more like $2300.

And so where are people fighting these $1,800 apartments points?

So two things.

Remember, data is two years old.

Uh so inflation is a real thing.

It does happen, and it happens higher for housing than it may for other base basics.

So that's one explanation.

The other explanation is that these are averages.

So rent for uh a small apartment in Emmett's burg will be less expensive than rent in for that same apartment if we're located in the City of Frederick.

All right, so it does its best to kind of average all of that out, remove some of the lumpiness and just give us a taste.

So one of the things we do at United Way before we even release this to the public is we do our independent research.

So it's not very hard these days to go in and see what you know where rents really are in the City of Frederick, and these are under a fair amount.

Between inflation and two years old, this is where this is where it's nice to have that annual report will catch up a little bit.

Um there's also some variability in the timing of the Federal reports from which this is coming.

So I'm not sure, but I believe that the housing reports are released every other year in the off-years.

Makes sense.

Good.

So similar similar uh analysis for the ALES numbers, but this time we're looking in real numbers.

So if you look on the left-hand side, that's the number of households.

It gives you a nice way to say this is first of all, what it what it looks like uh compared to each other from 2010 to 2023.

So you can see that poverty has been really stable over that period of time, a little volatility uh in um in our Alice numbers, and then some significant growth over over time in the above Alice Alice threshold over time as well.

This is important because we'll we'll look at this same chart for different demographics here in a moment.

In fact, uh we're gonna look at it now.

So this is what it looks like in Washington County.

So this is a representation of how we can compare community to community.

We just look around and pull out some examples.

So you'll see that some of that that line is shaped a little bit differently in Washington County than what is in Frederick County.

We're gonna see some potentially some significant variability between community to community.

So now we're gonna get into some some of the local local data, um, some of the local municipality data, and I'm gonna jump back into some additional demographics and then come back to the city.

Uh but you can see here that on the upper left-hand side of Urbana, so this is ordered in lowest concentration of Alice households to the widest concentration of Alice households in Urbana, you're looking at 70 percent, and on the other 17 percent, excuse me, on the other side of that you have Brunswick uh at 48 percent.

That's a wide variability between community to community.

This is something that you see in just about every community.

You're gonna have communities that are more wealthy than than others or higher concentrations.

Focus on the City of Frederick real real quick, obviously the largest municipality in the in the county at 45 percent.

The good news here is this is among the lowest percentages that we have seen in the ALES report since we began releasing this about 10 years ago.

Uh there was a moment when the City of Frederick was well above 50 percent.

Um we have seen a pull back about 40 to 45 percent, and we're gonna continue to watch watch that um very carefully over time.

So sorry, just to clarify that it's been decreasing.

The percentage has been decreasing.

Okay, since the last 10 years.

Okay.

So one question would be how does this dynamic what is that percentage look like against the gross population of the City of Frederick.

I don't have that data here today, but that's a question we can certainly analyze for you.

So we're looking at our our census tracks uh here here.

So again, the darker, the darker figures are higher concentrations of Alice throughout the county.

So you're gonna see that represented here is some of those concentrations of Alice households, and you see an awful lot of dark in in and around the City of Frederick.

So that's something that we watch pretty carefully.

Um if you know your city map, and I'm sure you do, you'll see among the darkest is the Route 40 area, especially uh north of Route 40.

So your Willowdale, your your um uh Willowdale area, uh Waverly are gonna be the highest concentrations of Alice households.

Not telling you anything you don't know already.

Similar, similar mapping there.

So I promised you earlier that we'd look at a little bit more in the in the city of Frederick and some of our localized data.

So uh as I mentioned, United Way had uh distributed about 5,500 Chromebooks.

Um we tracked our data very carefully, including um up to and including anonymized address data, and we're able to look at where those concentrations because this the Chromebook program was 200 percent of the federal poverty level or below.

And that's especially meaningful because we've got really good data now on ALES, and we have got really good data on poverty.

What we don't have data so great on is 200 percent of the federal poverty level.

And that's an incredibly important number because that's when you're gonna access your SNAPS benefits, housing vouchers, uh food uh housing vouch, child care vouchers, that that 200 percent of the federal poverty is really important.

So this was a great little sneak peek of where those that are 200 percent or below actually live.

Right?

Go ahead.

No, I'll always well, particularly we moved the district representation.

I'm having a hard time hearing, is it me?

Okay.

Can you hear me now?

I think so.

Can you hear me now, Philak?

Yeah.

Um we uh since we're going to district, I think it's important because you know this.

Where um the poverty in Alice, where people think it is, isn't.

And so I think that's important for us for us to note that it's a very important thing.

Well, you would think it would be it's not.

We look at the data.

Right.

Yeah, no, it's uh down to the exact address we are able to collect and analyze.

Council member, do you have a question?

Okay.

So you can see in the bottom left-hand corner, that's kind of your North Frederick.

This would be your Thermont, Emmitsburg.

Uh we really tried really hard in Sibyllisville, tough community to reach, uh, but you'll see some of that, and we had a lot of participation in Thurmont and quite a bit in in Emmettburg as well.

In the upper right, we had a look quite a bit of participation in the in the Brunswick Rosemont community.

You can see that represented by by the dots.

Now on the bottom right hand side is your Central Frederick.

This is your City of Frederick.

You can see a tremendous concentration of those within that community.

And to get a little more granular, we look in the upper left-hand side.

We identified the enough boundaries as identified by the State of Maryland of a high concentration of child poverty, and indeed our data data has verified that that 200 percent of the Federal poverty line or below or living in those communities, specifically in Waverley, Willowdale, and Hillcrest as well.

We can get even more granular with our data, but I think that's what we have time for today.

Your race and ethnicity, uh, significant concentrations of Alice households within the black and Hispanic communities.

And if you look at the numbers above, again, look at those numbers and above, we're starting to see significant growth, especially within the Hispanic community.

It's going to be very interesting to observe what happens with those numbers, provided our current uh our current um federal climate.

Um financial hardship, uh we can break it down by uh family type.

Uh the story here is we continued to see a very stubborn, very high concentration of Alice within our single mother population, our single female parent population.

And at uh excuse me, 76 percent, that has been consistently extremely high.

This is another one of those representations over over time.

Uh one of the concerns that we're seeing, this is again by real numbers of households on the left-hand side is not only do we have the highest concentration of Alice within our single uh single female parent population, it is also growing very quickly in real numbers.

We also look at our age demographics with high populations of Alice, um high concentrations on our bookends under 25 years of age or 65 and older, uh significant growth in those populations, or significant concentrations within those populations.

Again, we look at this in real numbers over time.

Um what you'll see there in that green, that's your 25 and under, relatively small population of Alice families, high concentration of at 85 percent, but a low concentration, or excuse me, a low population means that they're kind of really far at the bottom there.

Not that it isn't a major concern, it's a very high concentration at 85 percent, but a relatively small population.

Do you do you know, and this may be too granular, but those 25-year-olds who are in that um Alice population, as they get older, are they likely to remain in the Alice population or or is it more common to come out of that?

And then um, because in in the previous slide, the numbers for the 65 said there was a minus in front of it.

And so I I guess what is that trajectory look like over time, or do we know?

The uh the dynamics between popping in and out of kind of elude us now.

It's a very sophisticated analysis to get to that.

But what we're what we just intuitively what we see often is that poverty and Alice conditions can be can follow for a lifetime if interventions aren't taken at some point within their lives, probably earlier the better.

So intuitively, what I would think is that they're move often moving from Alice as a youth into Alice as an adult.

There are interventions that can make a significant impact on this, mental health intervention, housing intervention, homeownership intervention, education that can, these are the variables that can pop an Alice family out of Alice.

But we have to be available with those interventions.

Um you were correct in noting that there was a negative number in the total population for seniors, and that is represented here.

It's gonna be interesting to watch the total senior popul Alice population over time.

What we saw for the last two uh years is a slight tick down on the number of senior Alice households.

The concentration is still high, but the population appears to be diminishing a bit.

Questions there.

Council members, I think I'm gonna stop there and take any questions that you may have.

I think proceed.

I think we'll call it call it a day.

We went through a lot.

I guess.

So if you're paying attention to the world, a lot of there's a lot of uh despair about the direction things are going.

Inflation seems to be high, gas prices, groceries, uh purchases of vehicles.

Uh using this data, do you do you make projections or is that too difficult because we things are so volatile, kind of nationally, internationally that we can't really tell.

But I I work with um high school and college age people a lot, and um they're kind of launching into the world with a sense of of despair that am I going to be able to live above that threshold?

Am I going to be able to afford an apartment?

Uh and um I guess for those of us sitting up here is is we're interested in those interventions, right, so that we can have a healthy community.

Um that's a two-part thing.

Can we make projections and uh um do you have advice for us as we make interventions?

Right.

So I was recently reading a report in the last couple of months that it was an opinion survey surveying um young adults 35 years and younger, and the prospect of homeownership was at all-time low.

In other words, the third the those individuals were polled saying, do they think they will ever be able to afford a home?

And by and large, the answer was no.

They took it a step further and they looked at are your parents a homeowner?

And that number had shrunk even further.

So while their parents were homeowners, the young people felt that they were were probably incapable of owning their own home, uh despite that coming from relative wealth, if you will.

Um the one thing that we know is that when we have volatility in pri upward pressures on pricing of gasoline, groceries, rents, by far the most affected by those are our Alice families.

Umone who owns their own home, for example, may see some slight variation in the cost of their insurance, depending on where they live and certain lifestyle conditions.

But rents are going 15, 25 percent.

Post-COVID 30 percent or higher.

It is our Alice families that are the most susceptible to the upward pressures of pricing.

That is saying nothing of our recent volatility of gas prices, which will roll through to every other um item within within our grocery basket, if you will, eventually.

I don't have any questions, but this is really interesting.

I'm just kind of soaking it all in.

And I would welcome um future conversations about any policy ideas that you have that you would like us to consider.

We will we will be in touch.

We've we've got lots of them.

Thank you.

Ken, just a few notes.

I believe I was I was reading an article that the age of a homeowner for a first-time home buyer is like 42.

42 years old.

42 years old.

Do you have any idea what it was 10 years ago?

I think it was like 33.

And now this debt span, I think it was like 33, 34 was a first-time home buyer, and now it's 48 to 42%.

It's taking longer to get there.

Taking longer to get there.

Um had another comment.

Oh, I know we didn't talk about this.

I was just thinking about because your gas um question, particularly Alice family.

So gas going up a dollar for one dollar is like another $1,500 a year.

So for particularly you talk about an Alice family, which is kind of a segue to another part of this conversation.

That's a significant expense.

One dollar gas goes up and now $1,500 a year.

That you maybe not didn't account for.

But the other part about that question is I know it was a report about transportation.

Talk about homeownership, and now we talk about transportation.

Can you talk about that a little bit?

Sure.

You're touching on my touching on my spots here.

I'm doing with your lifeline.

Yeah, by what we have identified in Frederick County, the major pain points for Alice households are gonna be your your homeownership and interventions that you talked about.

One of those major interventions is uh could be a real focus on first-time ownership, homeownership.

Uh we've done a lot of work on first-time home ownership.

The county and the city have also done a lot of work in first-time homeownership.

But there's real opportunity to change lives forever intergenerationally by just giving them access, the ability to purchase a home.

And for many of our Alice, for many of our graduates from our pathway to home ownership, and we have had 34.

They're paying less for mortgage than what they were for rent.

Immediately, 10, 15 years down the road, that gap is really wide.

But you didn't ask about housing, you asked about transportation.

So I will note my friends at transit will be delighted if they're listening to listening to this that transit continues to be free and for the foreseeable future is intended to be free.

But the county is also taking the cost on fuel just like everybody else.

So it's pressuring, pressuring everybody.

Transport is the critical link between home and everything else.

Work, doctor's appointments, grocery store, educational opportunity.

Transportation is it.

Anything that requires you to be there in person, you have to have a way to get there.

United Way has identified transportation as a major pain point for Alice households, and we've done a tremendous amount of work to focus on that, ranging from the development of our Ride United network to advocacy in partnership with Frederick County Transit to try to bring new resources through the community to provide to bolster Transit Plus and our bus service.

It's a critical link for our families.

It would be lovely to say that if an Alice family can't afford to run their car, they can jump on a bus and use that for free.

They kind of avoid that that fuel cost.

But realistically, we know that there are challenges with that.

There are timing challenges and locational challenges and time challenges.

But the one thing I know for sure is the transit team and the county and the city, everybody is really focused on this issue and doing their best to develop solutions within the limited capacity that we have.

Well, you mentioned this, and I think it's important because we've we've done some partnerships around this.

Talk about the Ride United Network.

I think you mentioned that.

Sure.

So the Ride United Network is a partnership between United Way of Frederick County, a number of funders, and lift ride share, and about a dozen local nonprofits.

There are two parts to the Ride United Network.

That is partnership with Lyft Rideshare.

So we're able to provide access to lift codes to our nonprofit partners and to veterans and access to a variety of other 211 from the Mental Health Association is a critical partner.

If a veteran needs a ride to get to work or get to a doctor's appointment, they can call 211.

There's a little bit of varicate fake verification required, but they can get access to that.

The other piece to this is the ride united is the network of nonprofits who are providing transportation to their clients and we're we're helping through a grant to offset the cost of those rides.

In return, we get the data.

And that data is what we turn around and say, here's what transportation looks like in Frederick County, down to the exact address, beginning locations, end locations, times, costs, those things we're able to track in in significant detail.

Thank you.

I think it's you one of the reasons I want to have you here today as well as mental health, but particularly this.

The next report is coming out in June.

Should be soon, in the next couple months.

I think as we uh have our budget discussions that we keep in mind through that lens of the importance of particularly looking out for our Alice families and understand the ramifications of how we allocate dollars and resources from our end in terms of ensuring, as my colleagues said, these uncertain times that we keep in mind that there are folks in our people in our city who who are trying.

They're trying.

They're trying to juggle many different, and they're working extremely hard, two and three jobs to pay for family, paid away through school, all these things.

We can get into another part about living wages and all these other things.

But people are trying, and sometimes they just they we all need support.

I always say this I'm careful about uh from an economic standpoint because some of us are one roof collapse, one health crisis, one car breakdown from from, you know, from having the bottom fall out.

So I'm very sensitive to to these um concerns.

But I think it's just important for us to have this information as we look at our I know this is the previous data, but it's important for us to just keep this in mind as we go through our budget process and as we also formulate any any all the policies that we have for these these considerations to be in mind as well.

So if I may put a fine point on that.

There are many programs in our community which are focused on 200 percent of the federal poverty or below.

There is still a gap of individuals who are above that 200 percent but below a basic cost of living, and that is often the missing middle, if if you will.

So what we're encouraging all of our legislators to consider are programs that are looking at that eligibility criteria a little bit differently.

And the Alice data is a consistent and reliable source that could be used as measurement criteria for some of these programs.

It'll widen it up.

There'll be a wider eligibility, which will absorb resources, but it's in a and it's it's critical because just because they don't qualify for federal programs doesn't mean that they may need a helping hand.

Thank you.

Any sort of questions for any questions for Ken.

Kid Oldham, thank you so much.

Thank you for your time today.

Uh you will be back as we the new data is formulated to hear uh from you again.

Thank you so much for the first time.

Appreciate the opportunity.

Thank you.

Next on our agenda is the Mental Health Association.

This item we're presented by Susie Borg.

Welcome.

Thank you.

Thank you for the opportunity today to come.

You can pick it up.

It's portable.

You could pick it up.

No, pick up, pick up, move it closer to you.

No, closer closer.

Yes.

Okay.

Because we we're also televising as well.

So thank you.

Gotcha.

Thank you for the opportunity to come today and to talk a little bit about the Mental Health Association.

And like Ken, I could take a quite a long time talking about this organization.

Um, but we'll try to keep it um a little focused today.

So the um my goal today is to just walk you through a little bit about who we are, what we do, and our impact in the community.

Um it's really about how emotional wellness shows up in the City of Frederick in Frederick County and the role that MHA plays in that.

So our mission, um, as you can see here is to build a strong foundation of emotional wellness.

That's why we exist.

Um and we do that work in three key ways: preparing resilient children, supporting families, and standing with people in crisis.

And these aren't separate efforts.

Um each of them builds on the other, and they're all part of one continuum of services that we have at MHA.

We do organize by three different divisions, if you will, and child care choices is one of them.

And a lot of times we get the question why child care choices and mental health?

Um, and if you've ever had to look for child care, you will understand the connection.

Or if you're an employer and you have people who are struggling with child care, you'll understand the connection.

Knowing that our children are well cared for makes us better employees and makes us better community members.

So we start really early through our child care choices program.

This work focuses on supporting adults who are caring for young children every day.

And they we do that through training, technical assistance, providing coaching, as well as business support for providers.

A lot of our work is centering on how to help uh people open child care centers and to get into that um line of business.

When child care providers are supported, our children are thriving.

And that creates a stronger emotional foundation, and families are more stable.

So you can really see that connection to mental health in particular.

And in some ways, this is upstream mental health prevention, right?

If we start early, we're preventing problems later.

Um that's one of the things our child care choices programs do really well.

Our family support services are there as needs grow.

Um they might need a little more help to strengthen and stabilize the family.

This work is really relational.

It's a lot of it is one-on-one.

It is intensive, it's in getting very involved with that family, meeting them where they are and when they need that help.

So it's sometimes helping to navigate systems.

How do we get connected to other services?

Um building resilience and connection in that household is a lot of what that work is.

Uh our healthy families program starts very early with children.

In fact, we can work with moms uh prenatally.

We just need them to be a first-time parent.

And then we can work with that family up until age five.

So you can see that some of this work is very intensive, and you're really helping build that again, that emotional stability that a child's going to need throughout their life.

But when somebody is in crisis, the ability to provide immediate access is key.

And it is a privilege to be able to say that our main crisis programs, our call center, mobile crisis is now part of our continuum, and walk-in crisis are all available 24 hours a day.

And Frederick County and Frederick City having that opportunity, it's unique.

Not every community has that access 24 hours a day, and it's a real privilege to say that we do.

In addition to those crisis programs, we also have counseling services where we're working with people who might have Medicaid, Medicare, sliding scale to make sure that everybody has access regardless of their ability to pay for these services.

The majority of the services that we provide are at no cost to the person that we are providing them to.

What do people in the community need?

And you can there's ways that you can narrow it down by area, by county, and look really at those what those intense needs are.

But more importantly, it's also looking at the unmet needs.

People have that information in more real time to know what do we need to fund.

Much like Ken was talking about with transportation, that's one of the biggest needs that we see.

And it does show up as an unmet need.

Even though we have a lot of resources for transportation, transit is free, there's still people who can't get the type of transportation that they need when they need it.

So I did want to point that out to you.

This is just a snapshot at some of the impact that our programs have in the community.

It's definitely not a full picture, but it does give us a little bit of an idea.

You'll see we trained almost 2,000 child care educators to help strengthen that early intervention and prevention.

Our healthy families program, 96% reduction in parental stress.

This is something that we've been looking at as an organization.

Parental stress is at an all-time high.

And about two years ago, the former Surgeon General released a report talking about the stress that parents are under, and that it was starting to cripple them.

The majority of parents who are reporting, it wasn't just that they felt stressed, but it was so much stress that they were not able to function in their everyday life.

And so in looking at that report and some of the recommendations, we realized that a lot of the services we provide were what they were recommending.

So we started measuring our services to parents.

Are we actually reducing parental stress?

And last year, 83% of our parents said just by get taking that initial step and getting help, it reduced my stress.

And again, this is about building that emotional foundation for our full our whole community.

One of the other things that I'm really proud of up there is that in under 15 minutes, you can see somebody in our walk-in crisis care center.

That's about access.

That's real time.

That if you're having a crisis, you you may not need the emergency department.

A lot of times you don't need the emergency department.

Try walk-in.

We can get you in, and in most instances, we're gonna see you in less than 15 minutes.

And that's a really key indicator that we watch all the time.

Each of these moments represents or each of these numbers represents a moment, right?

It's a first step that somebody took to get connected.

And our goal with MHA is to be there when somebody takes that step.

Questions for mental health.

Wow, you do so much.

I knew about you and the great work you did, but wow, you do even more than I knew.

So that's amazing.

And thank you so much for it for that work.

Um, where do you get your funding?

We are funded through a variety of um different sources.

We do have uh local, state and and state funding along, and as I said, most of our services are at no cost, so we do have some program service revenue as well, um, but mostly it's local and state funding.

Okay, okay.

Um, and then about the healthy families program.

Um is there a limit on how many families can participate?

And if so, are you at capacity?

Uh there is not a limit.

Um it is there are screening um criteria though, you do have to be a first-time parent.

Um and it is a um it is founded as a child prevention model.

So there are certain criteria that you have to meet, but once we can get and we have to get somebody in before that baby is three months old.

Okay.

Um but once we get them in, we can keep them until they're five.

Okay, great.

Oh, sorry, just a few more.

Okay.

Um so I love the child care choices, and when I was looking for child care for my daughter, I used um your websites, and I found it more useful than others because it showed which places had spots available, and that is the hardest part because you're just calling everyone um around.

So that was really helpful.

Um I spoke with uh day care director who said that there was like monthly or routine meetings for providers.

Are you still doing that?

Yes, there are routine, yes, there are different um meetings for them.

There's different a child care provider association that they can be part of.

But yes.

Okay, okay.

I would love to chat with you another time about issues that you're seeing and things that are being um raised up.

Um, and that um director, she had said the hardest part for her was the business aspect.

Yes.

And that juggling about when to move kids to this classroom to this classroom, and you want to make sure that you have all your slots filled so that you can pay your teachers, but there's all these different, you know, birthdays and different things to consider.

So is there a resource that can help with that management and how to figure that out?

Yeah, I you know, I think so.

I think our child care choices team is so open to whatever the child care director might want to bring to them, um, they're gonna do their best to help.

Okay.

Absolutely.

Okay, awesome.

And then um been meeting with some in-home providers, some are that have just started, and they're really excited, and the trouble they're running into is marketing and filling their slats.

And so outside of your website, a lot of people go to Facebook.

There's a Facebook group, and you type in what you're looking for, and then that's also where providers say, hey, I have an opening or something like that, but it's all in one page, and it's really difficult to sift through and to stand out.

So what kind of support do you give any support on that aspect about promoting providers?

Yeah, it that's a really good question.

And I know our um, and I don't have the full answer to that, I will be honest up front.

But we um our Go FCC program to help um develop family child care centers and open more slots.

Um, we do that for Western Maryland.

We're getting ready to hit our 100th child care provider who will be opening.

But it but once they're open, you're right, it's about that marketing and that slots, and so a lot of that is getting them ready for that.

Um so there's probably some more that could be done around marketing, but again, our team is there to support them with those needs and to help them figure that out.

Okay.

Well, I'd love to chat with you and your team about this.

Um we can brainstorm possibly.

Yeah, child care is so important.

Yes, yes.

Okay, thank you.

That's all I have.

I also want to thank you for the work that you do.

I know that uh not everybody knows about the the crisis center and I have um talked to just friends and parents about the service because even if you do have health insurance and even if you're living above the Alice threshold, it could take months to get into see a mental health provider.

And so when somebody is in crisis they need to be seen right now.

So thank you for that service and and I hope that people know that that it's for everyone.

It's not just for for um you know certain populations.

It's for all of us.

So thank you.

I do want to ask you a question about when you talked about reducing parent stress and there's a thousand things that can cause each of us stress in families but are you noticing certain patterns that might be things that the city can address such as we talked about transportation we talked about child care.

So are there stressors that that we can help with yeah you I think all of those yes and you know and as I hear Ken talk every time when he presents the Alice data you know these things are so connected right and we all it's that level of stress and when I can't meet those basic needs and I don't know how I'm going to be able to make that and I'm feeling stress from you know being an employee and I'm feeling stress being a parent I'm feeling stressed about how am I connecting with my child's school or you know with the childcare centers reaching out to me and telling me there's issues with my child.

You know I just don't know where to go and I don't it's all overwhelming.

I hear about gas is now you know four dollars a gallon.

All of these things I think come together.

I don't think there's one thing just yet but that's a really good thing to start to go just a little bit deeper on that.

I like that idea to see how we can go deeper we still with the Frederick Police Department in crisis car, correct?

We are we are now part of Crisis Car, yes, since we took on mobile crisis.

Can you talk a little bit about about a little bit about that?

A very little bit about that I'm afraid.

But yes so we do partner um through our mobile crisis team to with the um city police to provide the clinician as part of that team right there is a um police officer a um EMS worker and then also a clinician and they are able to go out um Monday through Friday for about eight hours each day they can respond to calls that might not be appropriate for law enforcement get in there talk to somebody and I think the bigger piece about um what mobile crisis does and what all of our crisis services do is the follow-up and I think that's a piece that people don't recognize that every single person has that opportunity for us to follow up with them.

And it's not a one time follow-up a lot of times this follow-up is ongoing um it's proactive um and a way to get help get people connected to that care so we're really excited to see where that goes we have seen in mobile crisis we took that over in December and so it's just been a few months but um we've seen a significant increase in the number of calls our mobile crisis team is responding to since they've become part of the Mental Health Association.

No I appreciate that and to my colleagues question in regards to like what can we do like we're some things we're already doing I think those those those important to know particularly from a law enforcement standpoint because as we as you well just um highlighted that some of the calls law enforcement may not they're trained but that may not be the proper approach in terms of at that time to to have because it may be a mental health crisis and law enforcement just locking someone up quote unquote may not be the correct approach to take at the time.

I do want to highlight to the question in regards to I'm going to give you a plug um to funding is you just had your Catoctin affair just past Saturday.

We did just have Catoctin Affair it was a marvelous night.

Yeah so I so I just want to highlight that and and it's an opportunity thank you for doing that gives me an opportunity to thank our community for showing up for MHA.

Absolutely marvelous and um it's just the generosity of the Frederick community is amazing.

Great night didn't have a chance to go this year a surprise birthday party but I'll I'll be there next year willingly hopefully it's to hold me to it I know I know I should say I'll I might be there.

Oh alrighty any other questions for uh mental or mental health thank you appreciate mental health association and uh United Way um presenting today uh as we previously said there's a maybe not one specific policy measure um because some of these are very broad in school but I think every time whether we look at housing we look at transportation we'll be look at services um I think it's important for us in terms of how we look at policy from those lenses and the importance of how we shape those policies and make those policies and how those have those impacts in those respective areas.

So thank you.

With no fit business further business before this committee, we are adjourned.