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Commissioner addresses staff safety and distinguishes between care populations

1:03:53

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Commissioner Dannhauser responds to concerns about staff safety and discusses the differences between foster care and juvenile justice populations.

Acknowledges the importance of staff safety and its impact on care quality
Describes ongoing communication with staff and labor partners to address incidents
Distinguishes between needs of foster care and juvenile justice populations
Highlights efforts to create consistency across programs while allowing for innovation
Mentions the reduction in incidents at certain facilities despite population increases

Jess Dannhauser

1:03:53

It most definitely does.

1:03:54

I thank you for highlighting our staff.

1:03:57

I'm often on the phone with them if there is an incident, and I'm certainly on the phone with our labor partners to work through, to problem solve around it, to see what they're seeing.

1:04:09

Our staff are extraordinary, and they put themselves in difficult situations.

1:04:12

I do wanna make a distinction between the foster care population and the juvenile justice population.

1:04:20

I think for the young people in the foster care population, we also are really seeking support from the Office of Mental Health at the state level.

1:04:28

We're meeting with them because some young people have extraordinary needs that aren't the child welfare system isn't designed to support alone.

1:04:38

Right?

1:04:38

We they're our kids, so we gotta be there no matter what.

1:04:42

I I don't wanna make associate commissioner Cherry come up here, but her team under DC Mendez does a lot of the visiting to residential programs to try to create that consistency.

1:04:55

I think that there's a balance between innovation, like things like Fair Futures came up because some agencies raised some money and decided to start to put pressure on the city to to build on that model that we demonstrated was working.

1:05:07

So I love innovation from the providers and then let it work and then spread.

1:05:11

And so some of this the third Thursday work, some of the work we're doing on the preventive side is to try to say, let's talk about what's working out there.

1:05:19

Usually, you could pick all the models.

1:05:21

They have a few fundamental things underneath that if you're implementing well, we'll help you.

1:05:26

But you can't do anything without great staff, and so I appreciate you highlighting them.

1:05:30

I'm always concerned when staff gets hurt and and making sure that we are being responsive, not only in the incident, but to try to prevent them going forward.

1:05:39

We have seen incidents come down at Heart Rising and Crossroads despite a significant uptick in the population, but we are nowhere near where we wanna be.

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Discussion on consistency and best practices across contracted agencies

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Inquiry about mechanisms for scaling innovations across agencies