Travis County Commissioners Court
March 3, 2009,
Item 21
Ms.flemming since we have you there – 21.
consider and take appropriate action on the following: 1.
recommendation from Travis County health and human services and veterans services department regarding use of remaining fiscal year 2009 social services funding; and b, department's request to use $75,000 in one-time funding to establish a position and provide services for residents in rural Travis County.
>> thank you, judge, good afternoon, sherri flemming executive manager for health and human services and veterans services, prior to our discussion last Tuesday regarding $450,000 that the court allocated for fiscal year 2009 the court asked that we contact our partners in the basic needs arena to look at how they might spend an additional 10% in those contracts.
so we have provided you an additional spread sheet of information that has been provided by those contractors in anticipation of your approval for us to go forward with increasing those contracts by the stated amount.
>> the number of people who will be served is really good, very impressive.
>> uh-huh.
>> second.
>> does that mean that you move approval.
>> absolutely.
>> comments?
>> yes, sir, come on up.
>> good afternoon, judge, Commissioners, gus pena again, a native of precinct 4 and one of the things that has come up in the past traditionally is that when we hire nurses on the city side and county side, or social workers we fail to acknowledge the need to have that -- not a criteria but good policy to be bilingual.
i don't know if this job entails a person to be bilingual.
as you know as the community becomes more diverse, spanish speaking only, taxpayers, it is not wise and prudent to take another co-worker away from his or her duties to translate for that social worker and or nurse.
i don't know if it's a social worker position.
i guess what I am saying is I hear a lot of concern in the communities sometimes in providing services a new employee is not adept at the language that is spoken, even some vietnamese residents out there are not being able to communicate properly so maybe a word to the wise, if you would look at this.
i don't know if it's h.
r.
policy and/or procedure, but when I was with the i.r.s.
as an investigator, we ensured that the investigators, staff, were astute in being multi-lingual or bilingual depending on the population.
if you were in the houston district you definitely had to know vietnamese or speak vietnamese or be competent in that.
also spanish.
so I don't know as the need increases, population need increases as this recession will be more catastrophic next year, we know that for a fact, then I think that they should be looked at as one of the key critical issues in hiring a person.
i don't know as a former eeo investigator also for the department of treasury and justice, I would strongly recommend that the citizens of an impacted area be looked at and see if they are bilingual, what the needs are, language skills et cetera.
i know we did it in the federal government and state government and the city government.
so maybe word to the wise, hopefully this individual will be able to be bilingual or multi-lingual but definitely be able to translate verbally and also speak with likewise language.
thank you all very much.
>> thank you.
>> now I understood that motion to be for basic needs services and the internal.
>> right.
>> part of that money internal.
so a basically.
>> that would be item a, yes, I think mr.
pena was speaking in support of item b.
>> b.
>> sure.
>> any more discussion of the motion on a?
all in favor?
that passes by unanimous vote.
now b was the hiring of one f.t.e.
basically to provide services to rural residents, establish needs --
>> yes, sir, per our discussion last week, there was interest suppressed by the court -- expressed by the court to be able to implement some portion of a project that had been proposed by staff and it would in fact be the -- the duplication of a project that we started with cdbg dollars in southern Travis County in the del valle area.
and so the court challenged us to go back and look for resources outside of the $450,000 that you had set aside for basic needsment and so the department has been able to identify $75,000 of funding that was actually -- we were allowed to carry over from last fiscal year into this fiscal year.
it is one-time funding, but with the -- with the help of -- of my colleague and planning and budget, we were able to -- he were able to figure out a way to not only be able to fund this position if it's approved for the remaining portion of this fiscal year but the through the end of next fiscal year.
so the position would be time limited from approximately may 1st of -- of 2009 through sent 30th of 2010 so at that point the department would be challenged to demonstrate the need for this position to continue or -- or -- or go -- that funding would no longer be available for that position.
so we are keenly aware of what our charge will be in implementing this project.
>>
>> [indiscernible] reporting mechanisms will be brought back to the court to determine this position and especially if -- if -- looking at all of the assessing that they end up doing out in the rural community, when would that probably be brought back before the court if the court approves this today?
>> well, we certainly could report on any time period that the court would dictate, but certainly we would have to have in the budget process for fiscal year 2011 the appropriate requests.
if we were to determine that -- that the position needed to continue into the next fiscal year then our documentation of the number of people served and the types of services would certainly be included in the department's budget request.
however, we can report back we are anticipating being able to make this higher sometime in may, so as soon as this person is in the community and working, their numbers will be generated.
so we can provide periodic reports in terms of those --
>> sometime after may and get into the field and started doing the work --
>> I would say probably late summer --
>> [multiple voices]
>> okay.
i was just tying to get a ballpark time as far as some type of measuring device that we could impose here impose here to make sure what we intend to do as far as what we actually end up getting that's my concern.
>> yes.
with the implementation of this position, right now what we have is a social worker based in del valle but also working in both del valle and the manor area.
so what we hope is to allow the social worker to work in del valle and immediate area around del valle and have this person based in manor to work in the manor area and a portion of the Pflugerville area as well.
>> sherri, in regards to the backup that you provided the quarterly program performance report, can you explain a little bit of what this report shows?
>> would you like to do that?
>> I'm
>> [indiscernible] serve as the case manager for the
>> [indiscernible] cdbg social work expansion program, this is our report.
so what this demonstrates is the social worker and again the cdbg social work program is one f.t.e.
>> she can serve the unincorporated areas of our county.
>> is she bilingual.
>> absolutely.
what you are seeing here is the services that she gave to individuals, members of a family units in most cases although some of the house holds are one, you can see the unduplicated number of clients she was provided services to is your output number one and -- and then we are -- our second output are the specialized funding streams she accesses.
the one title number of unduplicated clients provided in Travis County, ysac financial assistance refers to accessing specific funding for children and youth who are at risk.
so that's funding that is targeting individualized family needs for at risk kids.
and Travis County b -- for -- financial assistance is family who she enrolls in assisted best single source models, emergency financial assistance for represents or utilities.
the owe on rents or utilities.
the outcomes who are receiving access to public services.
because our cdbg social worker sees exclusively families and households who have not been served in the previous 12 months, that's why those numbers look -- the same as her service numbers.
so at the bottom you will see there's an error on the calculation, that's because we have not received yet outcomes for her families who are enrolled in the yfac cases, have not yet completed their services and so they haven't done the exit survey, that's why you are getting an error there.
we expect to have that by the end of the fiscal year.
>> what's our take away from this performance report?
>> that the need is very significant in the rural areas.
the more rural areas of our county and that the social work services that our cdbg social worker have done have been much more intensive needs than we have seen in a -- in more of our center based services and the -- the amount of time that she's working with people is a longer am of time as well.
amount of time.
>> are the outcomes -- are the outcome measures taking into account the social worker wasn't hired until April 1st of 2008 some of the evaluative information hasn't come back yet, but taking those discounting for those two factors, are we seeing a high success rate, moderate success rate, low success rate, are we competing expectations, what's your --
>> we think that we're exceeding expectations, number of clients served certainly in terms of the number of families she's able to reach.
but we also feel that we are getting at the outcomes that we're hoping to see in terms of helping people meet theirself sufficiency goals and case management goals.
>> then the information that we're receiving through this pilot are we finding -- sherri, are you finding it from an evaluation standpoint is it aiding -- how is it aiding you if at all?
>> well, I think a couple of things I think have been sort of -- hard for us to see that such large number of people had no awareness of services that have existed in our service areas for a considerable amount of time.
we know that there's tremendous outreach, not only from -- from many of our partners, but also our staff at the community centers in terms of their work with the schools and with the churches in the area.
we have very robust advisory boards who know about our services but yet we were able to identify some 71 families who have significant needs who were not aware of even where to start.
and so that -- that for us is sorts of an ah-ha moment in terms of so how do we do a better job and a different job in making sure that people know where to start because certainly in social work, a lot of what our social workers do is necessary connections to services, to be able to sit with families talk about what the need is and point them in the right direction there.
better than the telephone book in terms of their ability to connect people.
so if you can see there, we projected 100 clients for the 12 month period, in about six months she already served 71 households I believe is what that number represents.
so it tells us that there's work to do.
>> sure.
>> in terms of of the yfac and the bss program, are these essentially what percentage of these irinstances where we are brokering folks into programs that exist outside of our own sphere of influence and to what extent are they identifying services that we ourselves as Travis County supply?
>> well, in -- in the case of the family assessment center that is a program that we provide funding, although we do have funding from the city cdbg program.
but that is a partnership with the school districts through their impact team.
so we are actually receiving referrals into that program not only from the social worker, but from the school districts where teachers or counselors have identified children and families who have special needs.
so we were able to access those funnels, a pool of what we call flexible dollars that allow us to target specific interventions based on what the -- what the families specific needs are, so this is a program that Travis County funds.
in addition the best single source program I will remind you that they are -- is the project of the basic needs coalition that we have internally ism.
ed as a program of emergency assistance and we have used a portion of our currently general fund, funded emergency assistance dollars to replicate that community model within our programs.
it provides a higher level of assistance that is coupled with case management.
so those two programs are programs that are Travis County funded that the social worker has been able to refer to.
now in terms of those programs outside of Travis County, jane, you might know that better than i.
>> I did not prepare the numbers, although we do workforce referrals as well as other referrals on our performance reporting for the social worker team.
these are numbers that are talking about what's the leverage from the perspective of the cdbg dollars.
>> we don't just track it on this particular report?
okay.
it would be interesting to know that to see how -- how this project is coordinating us and weaving us into the fabric of the rest of the -- of the social safety net communities.
>> uh-huh.
>> travis?
>> thank you, judge, just a couple of things that will assist in the implementation.
sherri mentioned that the social worker is a paid grade 17.
the start date would be may 1st '09, an end date of sent 30th, 2010.
funding source is 75,000 in the special hhs reserve.
what we have proposed is for this year to move $22,270 from that reserve.
the department's interested a budget adjustment of 15125.
again that would open the reserve to the department.
then for next year what we would like to do is take the balance, which is $53,447 budget adjustment, 1527 and move that from the hhs reserve to the allocated reserve.
with the intent that that would fall to the ending fund bam and then make an adjustment at that same amount into sherri's fy 2010 target budget so the funding would be there next year for that.
we would just like your permission to process those two budget adjustments as automatic if that proposal is agreeable.
>> move approval of the item take we grant travis permission to do what he just requested.
>> thank you.
>> moving, moving.
>> any discussion of the motion?
>> thank you.
>> all in favor?
that passes by unanimous vote.
thank you all very much.
>> thank you.
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Last Modified:
Tuesday, March 3, 2009 2:17 PM