QUESTION
Council Member Stevens Asks DYCD About Integrating Services Across Programs
0:38:11
·
3 min
Council Member Althea Stevens inquires how the Department of Youth & Community Development integrates services across various programs and specifically questions how information gathered during enrollment can be used to refer families to relevant services. Deputy Commissioner Mike Bobbitt highlights initiatives like cooperative health insurance referrals, tax assistance, and mutual referrals with ACS's Family Enrichment Centers, emphasizing a systemic approach to supporting families.
Speaker 1
0:38:11
And to do and and, you know, this is always one of the things that I'm always curious about, especially with programming are we integrating this into all the other programs that you have?
0:38:20
Right?
0:38:20
Because so often and this is one of the things I'm always telling about where, like, for example, I feel like we collect a lot of information, but none of the stuff that we need.
0:38:30
Right?
0:38:31
So, like, when young people for NYPD were asking for a criminalism bill, but we're not asking them or if they're in the shelter.
0:38:37
They need additional food or things like that.
0:38:39
And then this would be a great place to have that information and then give them referrals to a program like this that can then help them with the services.
0:38:47
So how are we course pollinating this work that's going on in these programs, and how do we get to a place where we are collecting information that we can then use to refer them to programs that we already have within the agencies.
Speaker 3
0:38:59
Thank you.
0:38:59
I'll give you a couple of examples, chair, and then we're always up for brainstorming about, further ways, to to leverage.
0:39:06
So one, within the portfolio in the enrollment process, there's some questions that we ask.
0:39:13
And to your point, like, don't ask the information that you don't intend to do anything with.
0:39:17
So we ask We
Speaker 1
0:39:18
have a lot
Speaker 3
0:39:19
of enrollment.
0:39:20
If the family I'm sorry.
0:39:21
I didn't hear
Speaker 1
0:39:22
I was saying we have a lot of that in operation.
Speaker 3
0:39:23
Yeah.
0:39:23
We'll try we'll try to make use of what we're asking for.
0:39:26
So we ask an enrollment if the family doesn't have health insurance and wants to be approached by someone about that.
0:39:33
So that's not just out of curiosity.
0:39:36
We have a memorandum of understanding in place with with Metro Plus since they are the health insurance enroller in there, quasi relationship with our sister agency, health and hospitals.
0:39:49
So we periodically turn that information over.
0:39:51
So, again, these are participants to say they do wish to be contacted, and health insurance enroller is don't just target on MetroPlus.
0:39:58
They can review all the health insurance plans.
0:40:00
It may be available.
0:40:00
So there's HIPAA regulations that limit how much information we can get back about that information, but we do have cooperative conversations to just try to understand, like, generally, how well are those referral relationships going.
0:40:12
That's one.
0:40:13
Another is we ask similar if they wanna be contacted with someone about assistance getting their taxes done because From the information we're aware from department consumer worker protection, basically anyone who would be enrolled in a community service block grant funded program would qualify to get their taxes done.
0:40:30
For free.
0:40:31
And so we do a push out every year before tax time to let people know about DCWP programs, and we also cards are providers throughout the year to do that is also what's the other the VITAS Centers?
0:40:44
The VITAS Centers is the tactics.
0:40:45
I'm sorry.
0:40:45
Yeah.
0:40:45
It's just it's the same thing I'm I'm referencing.
0:40:48
And I thought I had a third.
0:40:50
It was a third.
0:40:52
We've been talking cooperatively with our sister agency administrative children services because as I'm sure the chairs are where they've been expanding their family enrichment centers.
0:41:02
So we want to engage in mutual referral between those programs.
0:41:05
So that that's one thing that
Speaker 1
0:41:06
you guys are talking because you guys know how I feel about.
0:41:09
We don't be talking with each other.
Speaker 3
0:41:11
You're talking.
Speaker 1
0:41:11
So that that that that makes me a little bit happy.
Speaker 3
0:41:14
The the last thing I wanna say real quickly is that under the leadership of commissioner Howard, and the 1 aycd mantra.
0:41:21
I'll give you examples.
0:41:22
Like, for instance, as you well know, a year ago, when the office neighborhood services integrated into aycd, that was a great opportunity really cross pollinate work.
0:41:32
And so over the past year, I've referred to my team refers to community development is really community development plus public safety.
0:41:38
So if we have programs which we do that are targeting interventions to young people to try to desist from violence, young people live places, and young people have family members.
0:41:48
So some of the programs that we're reviewing right now, healthy families program, we wanna make sure that the folks who are doing those interventions know about those programs.
0:41:56
If you want the family if you want the use to assist from violence, you also wanna support the family.
0:42:00
So we wanna use models like we have.
0:42:02
So we've already been embarking past year on that.
Speaker 1
0:42:04
Yeah.
0:42:04
I know.
0:42:05
Because I was yelling out about that for the 1st 2 years, and so I think they wanted me to stop yelling about that.