Family Violence Council Minutes

February 14 2018

3.00 – 5.00 pm

400 McAllister, Room 617

San Francisco, CA 94102

 

Present:

Chief of Adult Probation, or designee: Shannon Petersen

Chief of Juvenile Probation, or designee: Paula Hernandez

Director of Department of Aging and Adult Services, or designee: Jill Nielson

Director of Domestic Violence Consortium: Beverly Upton

Director of San Francisco Child Abuse Council, or designee: Katie Albright

Director of Elder Abuse Forensic Center, or designee: Shawna Reeves

Director of Department of Children, Youth, and Their Families, or designee: Aumijo Gomes

Director of Department of Child Support Services, or designee: Freda Randolph Glenn 

Director of Department of Public Health, or designee: Leigh Kimburg, M.D.

Director of Human Services Agency, or designee: Barrett Johnson

District Attorney, or designee: Gena Castro Rodriguez, Liz Tarki

Chief of Police, or designee: Lt. Arran Pera 

Superintendent of San Francisco Unified School District, or designee: Thea Anderson

President of Commission on the Status of Women, or designee:  Minouche Kandel

President of the Board of Supervisors, or designee: Sharon Johnson, office of Supervisor Jeff Sheehy

Human Resources Director or designee: Reyna McKinnon

 

Absent:

Mayor, or designee; Presiding Judge of the Superior Court, or designee; Chair of the Consortium of Batterers Intervention Programs, or designee; Sheriff, or designee; Director of Department of Animal Care and Control, or designee; Public Defender, or designee; Chief of the Fire Department, or designee; Executive Director of Department of Emergency Management, or designee.

 

Other attendees

Glen Fishman, Institute on Aging; Tamari Hedani, Institute on Aging; Robin Brasso, National Council of Jewish Women San Francisco; Lucy Snow, Department on the Status of Women; Lauren Finke, graduate student, Berkeley; Arata Goto, HSA; Rob Castiglia, JUSTIS Program; Shelli Rawlings-Fein, First 5; Kenneth Kim, Glide; Julie Lenhardt, Family and Children’s Services; Akiles Ceron, Adult Protective Services; Terue Shinohara, RAMS student.

 

 

1. Approval of the Minutes

November 29 Minutes approved (Kandel/Upton)

 

2. Update to Family Violence Council Ordinance
    

• Minouche Kandel explains need to update the Family Violence Council Ordinance due to sunset clause – therefore opportunity to update the Ordinance. Minouche Kandel asks for any feedback, suggests adding Medical Examiner to membership and removing Batterers’ Intervention Consortium, as it no longer exists. Balance to be struck between having relevant people round the table, and not having so many members (some of whom may not come to meetings) that quorum made more difficult.
• Julie Lenhardt, Family and Children’s Services, questions whether we should remove members who do not attend meetings – but agreed that all members should stay because they all have a stake in family violence and may begin attending.
• General agreement that there should be more outreach to encourage all members to come –  agreed that tri-chairs will make a renewed effort to reach out.
• Leigh Kimburg shares information about a protocol in Cambridge, MA, where every city department challenged to think about how they intersect with family violence and how they could help prevent it. Minouche Kandel agrees Council could think broader – Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing, MUNI, for example. Jill Nielson suggests naming community health departments – currently fall under Department of Public Health, but could pull them out as so critical. Agreement that Leigh Kimburg covers much of this work already.

 

Timeline: Ordinance must be reauthorized in May. Action: Minouche Kandel polls members on including Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing and Medical Examiner – majority agree. General consensus that Batterer Intervention Consortium should be removed. 

 

3. Prevention Institute update
    

• Minouche Kandel provides update of Prevention Institute Workshop, held on February 6, 2018, including select slides from presentation. Twenty-seven people attended – many from Family Violence Council, but also people the Council has not previously interacted with (e.g. Housing) so good awareness raising.
• Minouche Kandel summarizes Prevention Institute thinking: family violence prevention through a health equity lens; not just intervening in individual cases but asking how can reform structures to prevent violence more broadly; multi-sector approach; community determinates; communities looking at their risk factors and their strengths, and how those could be harnessed; communities making comprehensive, environment/neighborhood-specific plans.
• Key questions: what in San Francisco are various systems that create the inequity/structural drivers that play out in individual relationships? How should Family Violence Council move forward with Prevention work? Are there any sectors that Family Violence Council not currently working with? What are the San Francisco risk factors and strengths that could be bolstered? Safe & Sound, Adult Protective Services (and others) do prevention work already (i.e. through Family Resource Centers) but how can we connect the dots?
• Julie Lenhardt says workshop enforces need to have Housing round the Family Violence Council table – housing came up repeatedly as structural issue. Leigh Kimburg agrees – and must name racism and displacement as factors that have really driven the housing issue in San Francisco. Beverly Upton brings up chronic fear, also connected with insecure housing – plus anxiety around Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Toxic stress.
   

Possible next steps:

• Poll from Minouche Kandel – are there enough people who want to get together and continuing with this work? Prevention subcommittee/work group?
• Jill Nielson suggests asset mapping exercise – see what Family Violence Council is already doing in individual organizations, where hitting barriers, leverage resources do have, which may not be obvious. General agreement asset mapping is good idea
• Katie Albright asks whether this work could be done by Our Child Our Families – voter-approved, appointed Council with 42 stakeholders to improve health of children. Aumijo Gomes (Department of Children, Youth & Their Families) cautions that group too much in its infancy to drive this forward and only meets quarterly.
• Leigh Kimburg says would be useful for each member to ask themselves/Departments: what do we think structural causes of violence are? Family Violence Council should develop a shared language on prevention. Beverly Upton suggests Family Violence Council should do group exercise together.
• Thea Anderson, San Francisco Unified School District, requests set of questions to return to Departments with about prevention methods – to guide discussion and bring back to Family Violence Council.
   

Action: Consensus that working group (who will develop these questions) plus Family Violence Council group exercise (perhaps some time in meeting) would be best next step. Beverly Upton, Katie Albright, Jill Nielson and Minouche Kandel express interest in being in working group.

 

4. Implementation of FY 2016 Family Violence Council report recommendations:
    

1. Firearms surrender program
   Elise Hansell (Department on the Status of Women) working on a budget proposal for this work. The Department on Status of Women has partnered with Adult Probation and Sherriff’s Department so proposal now bigger and will be presented at City Hall. Family Violence Council 2016 Report recently got widespread media coverage, mostly focused on high levels of domestic violence 911 calls involving a firearm and the Firearm Surrender Program.

 

2. Implementation of the 5 Year plan 

Tri-chairs continuing to think about meeting 5 Year Plan aims with competing priorities and the fiscal restraints we have. Katie Albright updates on the extra $250,000 of funding tri-chairs secured from Board of Supervisors following presentation of 2015 Family Violence Council Report – will fund Family Resource Centers partnering with Cooperative Restraining Order Clinic (CROC) to give clients access to high quality legal services and train advocates to help clients navigate.

 

5.    Meeting on Domestic Violence and Child Welfare
    

Discussion between domestic violence advocates and Family and Children’s Services arose from new police department protocol to report certain domestic violence cases to Family and Children’s Services, and there were concerns this might have chilling effect on abuse survivors seeking support. Barry Johnson from Family and Children’s Services is helping to coordinate meetings with domestic violence and child abuse advocates to think about best practices in responding to families where domestic violence and child abuse are co-occurring. 

 

6.    Key Issues in Family Violence Update

 

1. Domestic Violence:

• Beverly Upton reflects on huge amount of coverage of IPV in mainstream media;
• Domestic Violence community has in past been frustrated by how long it takes to get decisions on domestic violence deaths from Medical Examiner, but Beverly Upton recently had very positive meeting with Medical Examiner team
• Kenneth Kim (Glide) and Beverly Upton have been presenting on possibility of doing domestic violence outreach as part of proposed Safe Injection Sites.
   

2. Elder abuse:

• Shawna Reeves shares that two elder domestic violence homicides in January. Institute on Ageing does not currently have court watch, but is considering it.
• New Institute on Ageing partnership with Adult Protective Services on new unit that supports older people facing eviction.
• Family Violence Council Elder Abuse subcommittee has two new co-chairs.
• Elder Abuse Awareness Day in June – Institute on Ageing will do series of events (in partnership with Department of Ageing and Adult Services and District Attorney Victim Services) focused on outreach to seniors directly.

 

3. Child Abuse

• Katie Albright reminds that April is Child Abuse Prevention month – press conference with Department on the Status of Women on April 3rd.
• ‘Safe Start Academy’ on May 30, where family resource centers come together to share different practices and techniques they are using to support families and children. Thinking of focusing on healthcare workers, in wake of Larry Nasser news.
• Also in April, will launch second report on economic impact of child abuse – will cover cost of child abuse in 58 counties in California, and how they are doing prevention. Safe & Sound just secured more funding for this project to expand in future.
• Barry Johnson: Family and Children’s Services continuing to see drops in our incidence rates (both reported child abuse and number of open investigations and cases). They will investigate further to look at underlying dynamics of this, but positive news. Lowest number of kids in foster care Family and Children’s Services has ever had, too.

 

 

7. Other Agency Updates:

 

District Attorney: Gena Castro Rodriguez has secured funding to continue and expand program of victim advocate based in Bayview station, which ended in December. Now will be advocate in Mission, too.  Program has been very positive – seen individuals who would not usually come forward to law enforcement working with advocate. Currently looking for a partner to host Mission advocate – need small office space there. Pink, District Attorney’s second service dog, did first forensic case recently and went well.

 

Lauren Finke, Berkeley graduate student, appeals for insight for project on under-reporting rates for domestic violence in immigrant communities. Asks members to get in touch if have any qualitative information. Hoping to finish in mid-March.

 

SFPD Special Victims Unit: New leadership. Captain Mar has moved to the airport, Lt. Arran Pera temporarily in charge of the Unit.

 

National Council of Jewish Women (Robin Brasso) – Chapters from across the State, including SF, will be going to Sacramento to lobby on extreme child poverty, sexual violence and the bail system.

 

8. Public Comment

No public comment

 

9. Adjournment