SFGov

back to Juvenile Probation Department home page

Programs_Committee

2009 2008 2007 2006 2005 2004 2003 2002 2001 2000

MINUTES OF JULY 24, 2001 PROGRAM COMMITTEE MEETING
held at Youth Guidance Center Resource Rm 311 375 Woodside Ave San Francisco, CA 94127

The minutes of this meeting set forth all actions taken by the Commission on the matters stated, but not necessarily the chronological sequence in which the matters were taken up

1. (ACTION) Roll Call
The meeting was called to order at 4:38pm by the Chair, Comm. Arámburo, Comms. Grossman and Dupre were present at the gavel.
2. (ACTION) Review and approval of Program Committee meeting minutes May 21, 2001.
The minutes were approved as written.
3. (ACTION) Possible recommendation to full Commission contract for continuation of contract from July 1, 2001 to June 30, 2002 with the American Justice Institute for PRIDE system, in the amount of $375,000.
Liz Jackson-Simpson was introduced and welcomed by Comm. Aramburo, as the new Director of Community Programs for the Dept and she explained that being new, she was also being introduced to and familiarized with the various contracts the Dept has undertaken.

· (ACTION) Possible recommendation to full Commission contract for continuation of contract from July 1, 2001 to June 30, 2002 with the American Justice Institute for PRIDE system, in the amount of $375,000.
· J-Simpson stated that there would be an evaluation of the shorter term programs by Feb. 2002. She said that in regards the PRIDE system, they hope to be able to beta test the information soon, but there has been some problems in collection of data. She said a meeting with CBO execs was held and they are all aware that this is a requirement of their contracts.
· Comm. Grossman asked the Department to address the following questions re the PrIDE contract to date:
(1) Has there yet been a beta testing of the information system?
(2) How much has been spent already in this endeavor?
(3) Would like to see the list of success indicators and outcomes.
(4) The period of Feb. 2000 through June 2000, how much was spent?
(5) The draft of the data collection forms. What is the "scale?"
(6) What are the criteria for selecting the best instruments from the array of the
available tools. (to identify specific measurement tactics_.) .
(7) A list of the Executive Steering Committee (Comm. Grossman also asked to be informed of future meetings).
(8) How much was spent from July 2000 to July 2001.
(9) She noted the initial test with the data collection forms took place with 6 programs and met with extremely poor participation. In Oct. 2000 expanded to all the CBOs_ how many were those.
(10) Asked for a copy of the policy for information access.
She agreed with the compliance requirement in the new contracts.
She asked about the loss of staff and was told AJI lost a key staff in March 2001
She referred to the inability of purchasing the Philadelphia software.
The Chief responded first to the questions: he said that this is a system built on various stages of development. The evaluation assessment, design of the instrument, data collection, and analysis and reporting. There have been major challenges at each stage. Over all this has been an Exec Steering Committee of which Comm Dupre is a member. Comm Hale has attended a couple of the meetings. Comm. Grossman commented that this was a major contract on top of previous ones and she still wasn’t aware of the amount spent to date. The Chief didn’t have those figures at his fingertips but said that they would be gotten to the Commission. He emphasized that for the most part they were paid out of TANF and for each contract they went through both an approval of the Juvenile Justice Coordinating Council and Commission.
Asked by Comm. Arámburo if he knew how much was spent, he didn’t. Dr. Bennett reported that the initial contract was for $150,000, and it was just enough to get them established, got into town, found office space and staff. But could not break it down into categories of spending. Staff reported that they did not have the full figures.
Commissioner Aramburo advised the Department that they needed to provide information to the Commission secretary so that it could be distributed to the Commission in a timely manner. Particularly in a contract as expensive as the PrIDE contract where we had to justify the expenditures.
Upon continued prompting, S. Arcelona reported that the contract amounts were $150K for the initial contract (Feb 99-Jan 2000). The second year was at $197K, the 3rd year expenditure was $307K, for a total of approximately $654,000 contracted to date.
Comm. Arámburo asked if the entire amount has been spent to date, and the Chief replied yes, and possibly more that AJI expensed but was not covered by the Dept.
A report, fuller than the one given to the Committee, was passed around for inspection, that included the assessment forms developed to date. It included examples of the data collection forms that the CBOs had been asked to comply with.
T. Oberweis said that the reluctance of CBOs to cooperate with data collection does not reflect on their services. Comm. Arámburo asked whey there were evaluating programs. She understood tht the purpose of PrIDE was to gather info from CBOs, POs, Placement, Probation Services, and workingwith S. Clayborn, to be able to access and track where young people were in the system.
The Chief said there were two sets of evaluation processes. It is still the intention of having outcome information to do evaluations of programs. Liz J-S commented that what she learned the system is supposed to help the Dept do was to see whether they were making appropriate choices in placements, and to identify social psycho indicators which may have led the young person to where they were.
There was a discussion about the purpose of the PRIDE system, whether it was for evaluation of programs or a system assessment tool to help track of where youth are at in the system, and also to reveal what works and what doesn’t.
The Chief mentioned the evaluation projects that Davis Ja is involved in. But he does not do evaluations for the entire Dept’s activities.
He said that PrIDE is supposed to help the Dept look at what kinds of kids did well in what kinds of programs. And why.
Commissioner Aramburo asked why so much of the initial funding was devoted to CBO compliance regarding the assessment forms. Wasn’t the PRIDE system supposed to look at the internal activities of the Dept? eg. placement, supervision?
The Chief said, yes, but it’s not there yet.
S. Arcelona said that this as a system tool needs to stand up to academic rigor.
The Chief explained that this system is not the one that came from Philadelphia (ProDes). It is an entirely new one, starting from square one. The contractor is also a local operation, not the one from Philadelphia.
S.Arcelona reported that the forms were all beta tested in the pilot phase.
S. Arcelona reported that there are 400 completed intake cases (adjudicated) which can be used to draw preliminary abstracts, choosing from an array of criteria. What they need to do are the exit forms so there are comparative measures to look at (pre and post).
The Chief said that the reasons some of the problems came up was that the Dept included many more people from the start, to make it inclusive. (he implied that Philadelphia didn’t do this). The issues right now are the privacy issues.
Is the JJIS dataset different? Dr. Oberweis: Yes. The PrIDE system is an entirely different software program, which has to be set up to be able to "interface" with the JJIS database.
In addition to other databases (school, DHS, etc.) the PrIDE will collect self esteem indicators, school/family bonding and personality scales that can be revealing. This info as well as pre and post "self perception" scales, plus 6 mos follow up evaluations are not being done. The Chief said the plan is to integrate it into the Dept., to set up a position and transition all of these functions into the Dept.
Comm. Arámburo asked could they be done by POs during intake? No, not all the youth in the system are wards of the court and have a PO. 60% of the youth now in the system are not on formal probation.
Commissioner Aramburo asked why youth who were not on probation would want to answer these questions. Chief reported that was the issue from the CBOs re-compliance. Commissioner Aramburo said she was not surprised and should we have spent $654,000 to develop a system to monitor youth not on probation when we have other pressing needs in the Department like placement services. She commented that in times of tight finances, we need to be sure where we want to use limited resources, and if this program should extend to non delinquent youth.
She asked about the process of data entry and Dr. Oberweis explained it.
Comm. Arámburo asked why such a process couldn’t be done by a PO on intake. Dr. Oberweis said that they wanted to assure the best and most accurate responses and felt that a case manager in a CBO was the best choice. Dr. Oberweis said that this choice was taken from example of Philadelphia where they assumed it was tested and satisfies that academic inspection (may also have been other reasons).
Comm. Arámburo asked what academic test is this supposed to stand up to?

Commissioner Aramburo asked how much that would cost?
Commissioner Aramburo asked how much money has been spent in Philadelphia to date. Dr. Bennett reported $4 million. Commissioner Aramburo asked if that is the anticipated cost of a fully operational program.
Department reported, yes, plus an additional annual maintenance cost.
Commissioner Aramburo asked how PrIDE was different than the JJIS dataset where we spent $174,000 last year?
The discussion centered a while on the intake forms and who/when/how they are completed and the problems regarding CBO compliance.
Commissioner Aramburo asked who other than Philadelphia and San Francisco have contracted for ProDes or PrIDE type of systems. Dr. Oberweis reported that Stockton is developing something similar, Orange County, and since she’s been involved in this project she knows of about half a dozen other jurisdictions who have asked Phil Harris whether this is appropriate for them, but she doesn’t know if any have followed up. She knows that 4 jurisdictions have set aside money to start up something like this.
Commissioner Aramburo asked how long has Philadelphioa has utilized ProDes?
Department reported about 8 or 9 yrs, spending over $4 million during that period ranging from $500-$700K/yr on it and once as high as $900K.
Comm. Arámburo asked to see how Philadelphia has utilized the program and what are the results. Can the Department provide reports from Philadelphia and a break down of costs for the Commission to look at? The Chief said they could get copies of reports Philly generates. And the costs for each of their activity.
Dr. Oberweis said that Philly has 5 or 6 graduate trainees (Ph.D level), and Ph.D in-house staff members who do all the correlating and digestion of data, writing reports. In SF, it’s just herself and Dr. Bennett.
Commissioner Aramburo also asked for a breakdown on the money spent to date on PrIDE. Comm. Grossman asked for a breakout of the cost categories of this contract. How much on salary, data collection, etc. And what would be the maintenance costs. The Chief said they’d provide a year by year breakdown of the PrIDE budget, and where money has been spent.
Dr. Oberweis reported that the primary costs here had been software development. Philly out-sourced that. Dr. Oberweis said that the SF product is superior to the Philly product and that in 2 yrs time they probably will be asking for technical support from this Dept.
Question: what part of the grant was software development. Dr. Oberweis guessed it was a big chunk of the grant. She said that the most expensive deliverable of the grant is the software itself. It has not been integrated with the JJIS yet. It would take a month or so to de-bug it to put into the system here.
The Chief said that PrIDE is supposed to be system wide, and parallel to what’s happening in PrIDE, S. Clayborn is done some things around the issues brought up by the Committee, and will be presented to the Commission in the upcoming months.
Dr. Bennett said that the staff costs lead to the creation of the software. He said that the $375K mostly will go to staff, not equipment or supplies.
In answer to what Philly has discovered from their programs, Dr. Oberweis said one example was they discovered that for some of the bigger contractors who had low recidivism rates were taking the kids with the lowest risk factors ("easier" kids).
Comm. Dupré asked for all relevant information, both for the benefit of the new commissioners, and the old ones.
Comm. Dupré suggested having a special Program Comm mtg at the AJI office on Market Street to review the software developed to date.
Comm. Grossman asked is it realistic to have a product in hand in 3.5 yrs? Dr. Bennett said probably closer to 4 yrs. He said that they are being held up by not yet having an academically acceptable evaluation program.
Target date for full information to be provided to Commissioners will be July 30. Discussion regarding a meeting on August 2, but Commissioner
Aramburo suggested the week of August 13 so that Commissioners would have ample time to review the information.

4. (DISCUSSION) Update on CBO contract operations
Liz Jackson-Simpson referred to a chart of the contracts regarding programming that the Dept put together which will allow them to track the history and progress of services. The AB 1913 contracts are not included. This will be added later. The Chief said that AB 1913 will be funding Intensive Home Based Supervision, through Bayview Hunters Point Fdn, Instituto Familiar…, and CJCJ. There will be 2 girls services contracts done, and MCJC funds to develop a community alert system. Comm. Arámburo said that it is imperative that the information about these contracts/services be accurate and up to date, because when she goes out and promotes the Dept. she depends on having the facts on the successes to be able to show others what is really going on. Comm. Dupré asked if there is public information being spread about which gives the public a better understanding of the Dept’s operations. The Chief said that it wasn’t an organized, consistent practice.
Comm. Grossman asked about the upholstery program at LCR, which never got started. What happened to that amount? Ans: it stays in the Dept budget.
5. (DISCUSSION) Update on Robeson Rivera Academy.
Bob Wertz, Dir of Probation Services, reported that the academy is going well. 3 graduated at the end of May. There are 13 students enrolled now, with 7 awaiting referral to the program. The goal is to have 30 students. They have changed POs. Greg Gordon is now assigned there. The teacher, Julie Spalding has left the program. There are two mental health workers and a social worker there, who meet with the students daily. The students range in age from 11 to 15. Ques: do most of them have IEPs and is there additional funding through the school district to serve them? Ans: don’t know how many are special ed A couple are.
FITS program: this program tries to identify an older population for day treatment, with wrap around services for youth who may end up in placement. The youth are assessed at intake and if they look like potential candidates for this service, they are referred to it. It is a "vertical unit". It was established at the beginning of the year. Ques: how many POs assigned to that unit. Ans: 4 or 5. Comm. Dupré asked if there was a common thread to the offenses of the youth in Robeson/Rivera? Ans: no. Ques: are any of the kids on meds? Ans: don’t think so. The question is whether psych evals would be useful if not already being done, to allow us to know whether there are underlying psych issues which might manifest themselves in behavior, and, if detected early on, be more effectively dealt with. How many placement youth get psych evals? Or require meds?
Some parents oppose her kids taking meds. But others would benefit from the assistance this would be to them. Medication can be court ordered if indicated.
6. (DISCUSSION) Public Comment on any matter within the subject matter jurisdiction of the Juvenile Probation Commission.
Comm. Grossman commended the Chief for the activities that LCR has been doing recently. The morale is up and things are looking very positive.
7. (ACTION) Adjournment
There being no further business, the meeting was adjourned at 6:55pm

Meeting Information

Programs_Committee