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Human Services Advisory Commission
Meeting Minutes
May 12, 2009
7:30 – 9:30 p.m.
Rockville City Hall
| Members Present: | ||
| Rachel Carr Kim Dawkins Bob Dorsey | Cindy Griffiths David L’Heureux Agnes Saenz | Tim Stranges Eric Wang |
| Members Absent: | ||
| Sarah Mahin | ||
| Staff Present: | ||
| Mary Lou Jacobs | Sarah Gicale |
Re: Call Meeting to Order/ Introductions
Cindy Griffiths, Chair, called the meeting to order at 7:30 p.m.
Re: Approve April 14, 2009 Meeting Minutes
David L’Heureux moved to approve the April 14, 2009 minutes. Agnes Saenz seconded the motion. The motion passed unanimously.
Re: Reports on Caregiver Agency Site Visits
Hope Housing: Hope Housing is a program of Community Ministries of Rockville that provides permanent and supportive housing to homeless single adults with single or multiple disabilities. The program operates two houses in Rockville and one house in Gaithersburg. Bob Dorsey said that he and Mary Lou Jacobs had attended this site visit. He was pleased and impressed with how well the house they visited blends with the surrounding community; it was well kept and looked very nice. He was also impressed with Mr. Flowers, Director of Hope Housing. Mary Lou said that during the visit they discussed whether residents are eligible for Housing First. She got the impression from Mr. Flowers that several of the residents are happy with their current level of housing and might not want to leave. Agnes said that there is controversy amongst providers because people already housed are not eligible for Housing First. It is not easy to move tenants out of supportive housing. Rents are high and difficult for people to afford. Mary Lou said she had been told that nine individuals had moved out of Horizon House (another supportive housing program)—most, because they had gotten HOC vouchers.
Horizon House: Horizon House is a program of Interfaith Works that operates five different houses (one in Rockville, two in Gaithersburg, one in Derwood and one in Silver Spring) providing low-cost housing for homeless adults with disabilities. Kim Dawson said she had attended this site visit with Mary Lou. She explained that the house visited by the site visit team provides semi permanent (transitional) housing for women who are drug addicted or mentally ill. It is a two-story house with four bedrooms located in a quiet neighborhood in Twinbrook. The women have access to a kitchen and laundry facilities. In addition there is a small room to use for meetings. Clients are required to pay rent and must attend house meetings. Staff includes a project director and a case manager. The women receive case management services related to achieving self-sufficiency including budgeting/money management assistance, social functioning and employment seeking skills. Kim said that some women had lived there for five years.
Kim thought the program was well run and efficient. It did not seem to have any issues with safety. It did seem that there could be a need for program expansion. Mary Lou agreed saying that, if there were more funding, the need certainly exists.
Chase Partnership House: This program provides basic residential housing services to 36 homeless, addicted men of Montgomery County. Services include sleeping quarters, showers, laundry facilities and meals. Services are provided while clients progress through individual treatment programs and into mainstream society. Eric Wang said that he and Sarah Gicale had attended this site visit. He had first gone to visit Chase five years ago when it was in its original building. The new building reminds him of a hotel; it is completely changed. He explained that the site visit team was given a complete tour of the building. The tour guide was a former resident of Chase who is now employed there. He was very professional and welcoming. Only 3-4 men were inside since it was mid-afternoon; one had been admitted to Chase the previous evening. Eric thought Jim Booker, the Director of Chase, was well prepared for the site visit and that Chase has a complete program of services to help men find jobs. However, Eric had learned that 22% of men complete the program, which he considers low; 75% fall back into addiction.
Agnes explained that 25-30% is considered a good success rate for this type of housing. The relapse rate is very high. Bob added that, based on his experience at Montgomery Avenue Women’s Center, many of the services needed by clients are beyond the staff’s ability to provide. Tim Stranges commented that 30-40 years ago these same people would have been institutionalized. Now programs are faced with providing the same services without the staff.
Child Center and Adult Services (CCAS): Agnes said she had accompanied Mary Lou on this site visit. This organization provides the Positive Aging Project at the Rockville Senior Center with a range of mental health services including informal gatherings, workshops and brief counseling sessions. The staff person working at the Senior Center has had some initial difficulties recruiting clients. She has started attending already existing groups in order to recruit clients. This is the first year for this project and it has been somewhat experimental. The staff person has also provided brief individual counseling (a total of six sessions) but she has some clients who want additional sessions. Agnes said that the site visit team had some recommendations for CCAS:
a) to revise the sign-in sheet to include the client’s address so that it would be easier to determine which clients are Rockville residents;
b) to include outreach efforts on the City’s quarterly report form; and
c) to define the number of sessions that are provided in brief counseling. Mary Lou added that the program should go through a formal review process if they are going to extend the number of sessions beyond six, e.g., they need to ask, “What is the goal?”
Rachel asked whether these services couldn’t be paid for through Medicare or Medicaid instead of through City funding. Agnes said that most seniors at the Senior Center have incomes above the Medicaid eligibility level and that mental health services were identified as a need in the Center’s recent survey of Rockville seniors. Mary Lou said that 37 people have been seen in the first three quarters of this fiscal year. The coming year will determine whether the program is successful.
Friends in Action (FIA): Tim said that he and Sarah Gicale had attended this site visit. FIA is a program operated by Interfaith Works (formerly Community Ministry of Montgomery County) that traditionally has recruited teams of volunteers to mentor low-income families. Volunteers assist families with day-to-day needs such as budgeting or tutoring children. The program has been in existence for about 30 years. During the visit, the site visit team discovered that the program has moved into something new. It is now more of a case management program because the complexity of issues presented by today’s families makes it impossible to simply link mentors with families. Only two of the five Rockville families that were assisted by the program last year were linked with mentors. Tim added that self-sufficiency used to be the goal. That seems to have changed; today’s families are able to achieve less. Mary Lou said that families used to be matched with a team of mentors for a year. Now it may be for two or three months only.
Tim said that his concerns with Friends in Action were:
a) client families are no longer able to achieve self-sufficiency;
b) the program has experienced funding cuts including its grant from the City of Gaithersburg;
c) the program is experiencing a change in the kinds of families they work with including many cross-cultural differences.
Mary Lou said she thinks there is an equity issue. FIA now looks like Hope Housing in that it works primarily with families housed in properties owned by the Interfaith Housing Coalition, another Interfaith Works program. The amount of City funding provided to Hope Housing and other programs like it is much less than the grant currently provided to Friends in Action. There needs to be equity in funding.
Rockville Emergency Assistance Program (REAP): David L’Heureux said that he and Mary Lou had attended this site visit. He explained that REAP is managed by the City with services provided by Community Ministries of Rockville (CMR). The staff person at CMR is Monica Mendoza who is part time and works with two part time volunteers. While David said he was very impressed with the program, he did have two suggestions. He was concerned that the open office environment at CMR does not provide sufficient privacy for applicants needing to discuss their personal information. He also thought it would be helpful to incorporate instruction on running the program into a handbook that could be used should someone get sick or leave suddenly. Otherwise, David said, the checks and balances all appear to be present.
Strategic Planning: Service Issues Identified by Rockville Caregivers Coalition
Because of the time used to discuss site visits, Tim moved that the discussion of strategic planning be placed on the agenda for the June meeting. David seconded the motion. The motion passed unanimously.
Re: Old Business
Community Services Division Monthly Report:
Tim said that he would like to see the workshops on money management opened up to more people. Mary Lou responded that they would need to be a different kind of workshop. This is a program that has developed initially from people coming in to the office to apply for emergency assistance. Initially they didn’t think they had any money to manage. One of the things that came out of the REAP site visit (above) is that Monica Mendoza, the REAP staff person at Community Ministries of Rockville, is interested in helping with the money management workshops. This would mean that classes could be provided in Spanish, which could result in more people attending.
Tim also suggested that the monthly report description of Latino Outreach activities include the number of participants helped, as with other programs described in the report.
Bob asked if Community Services staff was seeing any trends. Mary Lou said that the real success story has been the Latino Outreach boys’ soccer teams. In addition to the teams at Rockville and Richard Montgomery high schools, Toula Candanedo has just started a new program at Julius West Middle School. Twenty-two kids attended the first session. Several already knew about the concept because of older siblings. Some of the youth in the high school soccer programs are planning to go to college—who never expected to. She thinks the program concept could be used for non-Latino youth as well.
Re: New Business
Re: Plan Agenda for June 9 Meeting
Re: Adjourn
Tim Stranges moved that the meeting be adjourned; David seconded the motion. The motion passed unanimously. The meeting was adjourned at 9:30 p.m.
The next meeting of the Human Services Advisory Commission will be held at 7:30 p.m. on Tuesday, June 9, 2009 in the Black-Eyed Susan Conference Room at 111 Maryland Avenue.