Meeting Minutes

1. Roll call.
Commission Chair called the meeting to order at 6 p.m. Present were Commissioners Beijen and Rojas. Commissioner Albright was excused.

2. Presentation by Daniel MaCallair, Executive Director, Center on Juvenile & Criminal Justice (DISCUSSION)

· The Center on Juvenile & Criminal Justice (CJCJ) mission is to reduce incarceration as a solution to social problems. CJCJ pursues their mission in three areas: services to clients and people facing incarceration; a pre-trial release program; and a contract with the Sheriff’s department, since 1987.

· CJCJ is also part of an intensive program called No Violence Alliance (NOVA), a model program for offenders with a history of violence reentering the community. They operate two halfway houses, a total of 16 beds for parolees with substance abuse, which is an alternative to returning to prison. They operate a reentry program for high level offenders that are either coming out of mental institutions or correctional facilities and do not have a place to go upon returning to the community. CJCJ places them in apartments and provides intensive case management for individuals 18-21 years of age.

· CJCJ has operated Detention Diversion Advocacy Program (DDAP) since 1993. It was designed to reduce the population in Juvenile Hall by targeting high-end offenders, designing a case plan, and making recommendations for release. The goal is to provide a high-level of intensive services, both support and supervision, to kids who present a high risk to re-offend or not show up at court hearings. Their philosophy is the kids most in need deserve the most intensive services.

· Funding is one of the problems CJCJ incurs. They have partnered with Juvenile Probation, along with Human Services Agency, DPH and Seneca Center, which holds the contract for Wraparound Program in SF. It is based on the idea that the money should follow the kids. With the DDAP Program, CJCJ services are providing pre-adjudication services for kids who would otherwise be in detention. One of the goals of the Wraparound Project is to improve the level of services, but also intended to reduce costs. Wraparound provides a cost effectiveness of means to move the kids back into the community and broaden the array of services. State regulation states that if you have a Wraparound Program you have to keep the cost neutral or lower your costs. Under Wraparound, flexible funding can purchase services needed on an as-needed basis. In addition, CJCJ is working with departments, as well as other non-profits, to provide greater levels of coordination of services offered in San Francisco.

· There were no public comments.

3. Review and revision of letter to Mayor Gavin Newsom re: 2009-2010 Budget and Programming Cuts for possible recommendation of approval to the Full Commission (DISCUSSION)

Motion by Commissioner Beijen to move item to the next Full Commission meeting, second by Commissioner Rojas.
There were no public comments.

4. Mark Morris and Associates Presentation (DISCUSSION ONLY)

· Funding was provided by the Zellerbach grant to work with Juvenile Probation Department (JPD) to strengthen the organization, implement evidence based practices in its operations, and strengthen relationships between the department and community.

· In terms of organizational development, they have done a number of interviews and observations that led to recommendations for strategic planning. Their focus is to facilitate staff engagement at all levels of the department. They have implemented “Improvement Teams,” which are groups of people in the department to work on specific topics, and the “Communications Team,” which is designed to improve communication.

· There is an on-going effort to implement the Youth Assessment & Screening Instrument (YASI). They are about to start a “Programming Team” for staff to come up with ideas of what they would like to do on the units. In addition, they have started to develop leadership training and assistance, as well as general staff engagement to strengthen leadership.

· They have organized a steering committee to go over their recommendations and develop priorities to guide their work in the second year. They would like to expand the steering committee to run productive meetings, useful performance measurements, performance evaluations for staff, and setting priorities for the department.

· Part of organization development has been to look at policies and procedures, particularly relating to performance management. They plan on instituting training on how to do productive performance management. The goal is to work out a plan for each member to develop more skills and engagement.

· The steering committees highest priority is community relations because this has been a history of conflict and separation. They will be developing activities and workshops that will help strengthen the ties between community programs, other justice agencies and JPD.

· A major effort during the first year, and will continue into the second year, has been to establish evidence based practice. We have hired a professor from the University of Cincinatti. He is the leading expert on juvenile justice regarding evidence based practices.

· The second year is going to be devoted to training staff and community based organizations.

· Performance management and assessment is making sure staff understands what is expected of them. The effort in the first year to get staff involvement was basically on the premise that people are more likely to be engaged if they have a sense of ownership. We have had some difficulty because the staff has been so busy and do not have time to go to a lot of the meetings. Some of these improvement teams really call for fairly intensive work over a period of time. One effort that we are still formulating is to help the department develop a strategic planning capability, which is on-going.

· On the leadership level, people will be setting priorities. On a unit level, we will be asking staff to go through existing policies and procedures to decide what to work on and improve. The idea is to get as much engagement as feasible with every level of the department. The point of evidence based practice is to improve effectiveness working with kids.

· The “Communications Team” has had success in terms of working with staff. One of the products is the newsletter. Every article is written by a member of the department and the first newsletter had results from a department wide survey to rate communications. They are going to be re-administering the “Communications Team” survey every six months so that they can get more detailed feedback from staff regarding improvement.

· There were no public comments.

5. Adjournment (ACTION ITEM)

The meeting adjourned at 7:12 PM.

Meeting Information

Programs_Committee

Meeting Minutes