Board of Supervisors Committee - Regular Meeting

Good afternoon and welcome to the Alameda County Board of Supervisors Social Service Committee meeting for Monday, July 27, 2026. May I have a roll call, please? Supervisor Fortunato-Bass?

Present.

Supervisor Tam? Present.

We have a quorum.

Thank you. Would you go over instructions for participation online and in person?

In person, the meeting site is open to the public. If you'd like to speak on an item, fill out a speaker's card in the front of the room and hand it to the clerk. For remote participation, follow the teleconferencing guidelines at www.acgov.org and use the raise your hand function.

Thank you. So we have three informational items today, and we will start with the one from the Department of Children and Family Services, our 10th update and the findings from the state auditor's report. to the Joint Committee on Legislative Audits. And this is the item that Supervisor Fortunato-Bass is here for, she said. Take it away.

Good afternoon, Supervisors. This is the 10th presentation of where we are with the findings for the audit. So today we will be covering task force inquiries, investigations and timeliness, workforce and staffing, accountability and the audit, and a closing and we've added some items to the index. So one of the things we have tried to make sure the social services committee supervisors that you are aware of is everything we present at the task force. So a majority of these slides are the ones that were covered in the previous task force. So the Alameda County children and non-minor dependents in foster care, you can see below the total numbers of children ages zero to 17, which is 607. And the total number of non-minor dependents Those are our youth that are ages 18 to 21, and that total number is 196. 51.9% of Alameda County foster children are placed with their relatives, and 48.5% of Alameda County non-minor dependents are placed in transitional housing. Next slide. So Alameda County Children in Foster Care, their placement with siblings and relative or non-related extended family members, caregivers. So Director Ford and myself had a meeting with Senator Wahab on June 15th, and she had some very specific questions, data requests regarding children and their siblings' foster care. And they are, what are the characteristics of sibling placements? Are they in county, out of county, out of state? How many children are placed with relatives? How many children are reunified after placement with siblings? What is the average length of stay for all children and for children placed with relatives? How many children are receiving kin gap? And that's the guardianship for relatives is called kin gap. And what care and services are provided to youth placed with relatives? Next slide. So for Alameda County children in foster care, 45.1% of all Alameda County foster youth are placed in Alameda County. And 41.3% of Alameda foster youth with siblings in foster care are placed within the county. So the numbers. or laid out a little more specifically for you, that 45.1% comes out to 128 youth. And for youth with no siblings, 146. For a total of 274. For those placed out of county or out of state, youth with siblings in foster care is 182. For those with no siblings, 151. So we have 310 total youth placed in Alameda County and 297 placed outside of the county. Some numbers are masked. So if you are in a state and there are less than 10 children out of state, the way our data runs is it doesn't count them because it wants them for you not to be able to identify who they might be. So I referred to that a couple of times in this presentation, but we have some numbers that are masked. Next slide. So 51.9% of all Alameda County foster youth 0 to 17 are placed with relatives. And 58.4% of all Alameda foster youth 0 to 17 have siblings in foster care are placed with relatives. This is just a different breakdown looking at foster youth with siblings in foster care. The number is 310. And for those placed with a relative or a nerf room, that number is 181. Next slide. So how many children are placed with some or all of their siblings? and being cared for by a relative or a non-related extended family member. A foster youth with siblings also in foster care, 73.9% are placed with some or all of their siblings. 63.8% of those children are placed together with a relative or a non-related extended family member. Of those children not placed with their siblings, 42% are placed with relatives, 24.7 are youth that need a higher level of care, so they're placed in an STRTP or a foster family agency. The breakdown is to your right. This is just a basic repeat of those numbers.

Next slide.

So. The next question we were asked is, how many children are reunified after placement with siblings? And what is the average length of stay for all children and for children placed with relatives? So this slide is really an opportunity for us to explain the entry cohort methodology. When looking at reunification or exits, you actually use youth that are entering care. And that can be youth Reunification can be up to 18 months typically. So the entry cohort consists of all children who enter foster care during a specific 12 month period and follows their experiences after entry. This longitudinal approach allows us to answer questions about how long children stay in care after entry and to understand how long it takes to achieve different exits. To understand how long it takes to achieve permanency outcomes, a lengthy follow-up period is necessary. So at least 12 months is needed to follow reunification outcomes, as reunifications can still happen up until the 18-month hearing, and foster care exits to adoption and guardianship take longer. Because of that, the outcomes in the slides that follow are for children who enter care in 2023 and 2024 as of June 30th, 2026, the two most recent full calendar years of data that are available. Next slide. So, for children who enter care between January 2023 and December 2024. In 2023, that number was 334. And in 2024, that number was 350. The number of children who entered foster care with siblings in 2023 was 50.6%. And in 2024, it was 48.3. The number of children who reunified in 2023 was 49.4%. It was 44.3% in 2024. The number of foster youth who exited from foster care to adoptions was 12.9% for 2023 and 2.9% for 2024. And those that exited to guardianship, 13.2 in 2023 and 3.4 in 2024. Number of youth still in foster care That number, that percentage is 27.8% for 2023 and 44% for 2024. Number of youth who are masked is 20 youth or who needed a higher level of care is 13%. And for 2023, the number is less because it's less than 10. Next slide. So how many children are reunified after placement with siblings? Just looking at 2024, that number was 88.2% or 149 youth. And of children who entered foster care with siblings, how many were reunified after placement with some or all of their siblings? That number is 94 for 2024 or 63.1%. In 2023, how children were reunified, how many days, the average was 310 days. And in 2024, the average number of days was 217. Next slide. So what is the average length of stay for all children and for children placed with relatives? I'm just going to focus on 2024. although you have the 2023 numbers. For 2024, the number of foster youth in the cohort who have exited foster care was 196. The average length of stay for all children in the entry cohort who have exited to foster care through June 30th, 2026, the average length of stay was 295 days. For reunification, 260 days. for adoption, 556 days, and for guardianship, 582 days. The length of stay for placement with relatives, foster youth who exit foster care, the total number of youth was 85 for 2024. Their average length of stay for reunification, 290. For adoption, 546, and for guardianship, 630 days. Next slide. So children who exit to relative guardianship and are receiving KenGAP, that number is 528. The question was asked, what kind of care and services are provided to youth placed with a relative? They could get legal assistance to support guardianship. They receive case management, resource family training, the family urgent response system, that is a number they can call to get a warm handoff and assistance. They get mental health supports and they get kinship support services programs. We have two programs in Alameda County, basically one in North, one in South County available to caregivers. Next slide, please. So one of the questions the audit asked and was asked again was the audit identified cases involving youth with siblings where there were periods of little or no sibling contact. Has DCF conducted a broader review to determine whether that pattern exists beyond the audit sample? If so, how many cases were reviewed and what did DCFS find and what corrective actions were taken? So as a matter of practice, for Alameda County, the state has a continuous quality improvement with case reviews. We had 12 cases where this came up, and 66.7% were visiting with their siblings who were not placed with them. Our strength rating in this measure is 88.9% on item seven. So there continues to be work to do in this area to make sure siblings who are not placed with their other siblings are visiting and that we are documenting why they may not be visiting. Next slide. So one of the questions that was asked, how are we documenting sibling placement and contact? So this just kind of takes you through where the various points of contact where we're reviewing this issue. So when children come into placement, the first thing we are looking at is making sure a child can either be placed with the siblings that came in to care with them or if there are other siblings already in care. if placement with that sibling is possible. Sibling placement and visitation plans are discussed and developed in our child and family team meetings that we have throughout the life of a case. Sibling visitation is incorporated into the case plan by the child welfare worker. When siblings are not placed together, the expectation is that sibling visits will be held at least monthly. And if it's not happening, or it's not in the child's best interest, it's documented in the court report. Sibling placement and visitation is monitored by the child welfare worker on an ongoing basis as part of worker contacts with children. Remember, worker contacts, they occur monthly as well. Sibling placements and information about contact between siblings is documented in both the contact notes and court reports. prepared by child welfare workers. Supervisors review contact notes along with the court report as part of the court report approval process. May not be every contact note, but there are checks of that. And then sibling placement and sibling visits are discussed at court hearings. Next slide. So the documentation of sibling placement and contact, as part of the audit process, we changed what that documentation looks like in our court reports. And what you see to your left is a snippet of what is actually in a court report. So it lists the sibling relationship, placement, with whom, are the siblings placed together, and efforts to place siblings together. The italicized portions there are the hidden texts that we give child welfare workers, which are prompts to answer those questions. We look at the impact to sibling relationship and child welfare workers write out what is the sibling visitation. And if it's not occurring, why is it not occurring? So, Supervisors review court reports. Court reports are not submitted independently. They are signed by a child welfare supervisor. And program managers randomly select court reports, one report per unit to review per month as their own QA process to see how things are being documented. Next slide. So preserving sibling relationship. The question was asked, do we track a sibling contact metric across open foster care cases? For example, the number of children with siblings, the numbers placed together, not placed together, et cetera. So we have two reports that we are able to track in our safe measures program. Safe Measures is the database that overlays our case management database. We can look at the number of children with siblings, the numbers placed together, and the numbers not placed together. There is no existing metric that is able to track the number of sibling contact plans or number of sibling visits as there aren't fields in our case management system to support this. Next slide. And the following slides were, there are a number of questions about sibling engagement and preserving sibling relationships in response to the audit. So a lot of words. So we conduct investigations within 30 days of a child's removal and placement in foster care to identify the child's siblings, asking the child in an age-appropriate manner about their siblings. We review the case file for information about their siblings, and we contact the child's identified relatives. Train child welfare workers during section and unit meetings at individual supervision or the department's existing family visitation policy regarding establishing and encouraging sibling visits. Additional steps include supervisors supporting child welfare workers during supervision meetings with the establishment and maintenance of visit plans that include sibling visits. CWWs will utilize the child and family team meetings to support the creation and updation of case plans. CWWs assigned to a child's case will collaborate with CWWs assigned to any sibling of that child on their caseload. and documentation of those efforts will be made in the case management system. And then finally, we developed a documentation template for sibling and contact visits that's in the court report.

Next slide.

So please distinguish between language added to the system improvement plan and actual operational changes implemented in the field. Practice report in our system improvement plan. The action step one is the department implemented in September 2025, a relative notification procedure that better organizes and outlines requirements for staff to ensure that all of a child's relatives are identified. and then how we'll track relative notifications that are sent out or implemented. And action step two is the action step was implemented in November 2025 and efforts to continue throughout the reporting period. Management has observed that CWWs are working within CFTs to establish visit plans, including sibling visits and documenting the information in CWS CMS. And then it goes on to explain what the documentation looks like. I think people don't understand the system improvement plan is meant to be the actual work we are doing to implement our systems. So we have to report back to CDSS annually on how we are doing in these metrics and what we believe we can do to improve them. Next slide. Preserving sibling relationships. The question was asked, what role, if any, do Casey family programs or other contractors play in maintaining sibling relationships? Specifically, are sibling contact outcomes included in any contractor's scope of work, deliverable, or performance metric? And does DCSF staffing or capacity challenge affect sibling engagement, visitation, or relationship maintenance? And if so, what is the specific staffing or resource gap? On a case-by-case basis, KC family programs and other contractors may play a role in maintaining sibling relationships, depending on the individual needs and goals of children being served by their programs. As such, sibling contact outcomes are not currently included in any contractor's scope of work or deliverable. Victor Community Support Services that is our new contractor for family finding engagement, will prioritize family finding efforts for youth not placed with siblings and will work with the family network to support sibling connections. The contractor is required to report the number of sibling connections identified on a quarterly basis. One identified barrier to sibling contact for siblings who are not placed together is transportation to and from those visits.

Next slide.

For children currently in foster care who are not placed with siblings and do not have regular sibling contact, what are we doing to identify and correct those cases? That is currently addressed individually between child welfare supervisors and child welfare workers during regular supervision and or the court report approval process. Can the department provide the task force with the sibling contact corrective action review by the next meeting? Sibling interaction is detailed in the case plan and sibling visitation is documented in the court report. So those are the two measures where we would track along with supervision improvement of that measure. What should the task force review in 30 days to verify that sibling relationships are being identified, documented, maintained, and supervised in practice. Data from the department should continue to be monitored on our website.

Next slide.

Additionally, inquiries from Senator, from Senator Dr. Wahab's task force, there were some longstanding requests for a written ombudsman determination process overview. emergency response metrics for March and April, and a recruitment update, including current vacancy rates, hiring pipeline, and current ERU staffing mix. Next slide. The timely referral of investigations. In June, I guess in March, the first month asked was 77.1%. 10 days were 34.8%. You can see the number has declined in June to 50.8, although the numbers are consistent for 10-day responses. Next slide. Timely referral of closures. In June, the timely referral of closures occurred 33.9%. and for 10 days, 11.5%. Next slide, I'm sorry. DCFS workforce updates. For this year, the department has hired total 165 child welfare workers from 2019 to present, 46 child welfare worker ones and 98 child welfare workers too. We currently have 233 employed in both class categories. We have 20 staff on leave and available staff is 213. Our current vacancy rate is the department total is 21% of all positions. But for a child welfare worker too, it is 21%. 1.2 percent. Next slide. This is just a different graphic of our attrition and hiring for the following years, 2024, 2025, and 2026. Our next hiring filing deadline for continuous hiring will begin we will do interviews again on september 15th and november 16th of this year next slide child welfare supervisor staffing our current vacancy rate is 16.9 percent but it's important to note that we do not have any units where there is not a supervisor part of the reason why the vacancy rate is higher is our staff has declined so we haven't filled positions where there wasn't a need. Next slide. This is the funnel for child welfare worker one, and this is as of July 20th, 26. We received 199 applications, 61 met requirements. We offer positions to 15 and six were hired. Next slide. For our Child Welfare Workers II, the master's level staff, we received 55 applications, 34 met requirement. We offered to 15, and 13 were hired. Next slide. Proposed Child Welfare Worker Staffing. These are the anticipated assignments of the Child Welfare Worker Inductment Class 26.3, the third cohort of youth that we have hired or young people we have hired this year. 12 will go to emergency response, one to family maintenance, three to family unification, one to our permanent youth connections program, one to placement and one to resource family approval. Next slide, please. And this is looking at with continuous hiring. We're preparing for our fourth Hiring cohort, 26.4. We received 249 applications, 81 met required, and 14 have been offered positions. Interviews and things are still in process, so we don't have a firm number of how many we'll be hiring. Next slide. For the master's level, we received 35 applications. 29 met minimum requirements. Eight were offered positions, and again, we are not sure how many will accept a job. Next slide. Status update on the PACE meet and confer process initiated in January. What proposals were on the table? What is agreed and what remains unsolved? We continue to, oh, next slide. I think it's written out. There have been four meetings to date. Items discussed include the need for child welfare supervisors to monitor closely child welfare workers to ensure investigations are initiated and completed in a timely manner. Supervisors currently accompany staff on home visits, and there is a shared goal of establishing a more systematic and formalized approach to this practice. How often do supervisors need to go out with their staff Meetings will continue until these issues are resolved. Next slide, please. This is the audit dashboard. Supervisor Tam, do you want us to link to the actual dashboard or keep going?

Let me ask Supervisor Fortunato-Bass is following along. Did you want to see the links that we have to the dashboard?

I think we can go through the slides and I may be interested in seeing the dashboard as we answer some questions later. Thank you.

Okay. Thank you. Next slide then. Oh, that was the last slide. Questions. We do have some additional appendix things just for your information with additional questions and events. That's the end. Thank you.

Thank you. Let me go to Supervisor Portranot-Bass. I think she has some time constraints. Thank you, Chair Tam.

Yes. Thank you, Chair Tam. And thank you to Michelle Love and your team for your work, as well as the very comprehensive report. It was very helpful to see all of this information regarding sibling unification. I if there is any information on the dashboard that gives us a sense of comparables in terms of time periods. That might be helpful to refer back to. I can't remember if there are metrics in our dashboard around sibling reunification, but if there are, it might be good to sort of see whether, in addition to the snapshot point in time, if there's any way that we can see what the progress has been.

I do believe I'm looking to my site. Jennifer, the sibling.

There is no metric on the audit dashboard about reunification.

Not reunification. I think she's looking for sibling contact or reunification.

Any of the above, you know.

On the audit dashboard, currently we have information about the number of siblings who are placed with all or some of their siblings. OK, can you hear me now?

Thank you.

We don't currently have an ongoing metric about the number of siblings and their reunification outcomes on the audit dashboard. That was an ad hoc additional request, so we can do that periodically. But because those are longer cohorts, that data wouldn't necessarily change very often.

OK, OK. I was just curious. I know we looked at 23-24, but if there's any trends that you are able to point to, that might be useful for us to know. But I can move on to a few questions about the presentation. So in terms of slide 11, there were significantly less exits to adoption or guardianship from 23 to 24, and I'm wondering if you can share why.

One of the reasons that the number of adoptions and guardianships are lower for 2024 is there has been less time elapsed for those outcomes to be achieved. So those outcomes typically take longer and after reunification has not, if reunification is unsuccessful. So we would imagine that in, like if we were to look at the 2024 four cohort in a year, that we would see those numbers continue to increase. I see.

And then in terms of slide 13, there were significantly fewer days in care for those who exit, which seems to be a good thing. Can you explain why in terms of that trend?

I think one of the things, because we were looking at those two years, again, because the children who still have yet to exit from those cohorts, if they were to exit, let's say in the next six months, their number of days in care would be longer. And once we average those in, they might be more comparable, but the kids in the 2023 cohort, they've had a longer amount of time elapsed since they entered care for their possible exit.

Okay. And then moving on to slide 24, the percentage of timely investigations during the past four months is going down 77% to 50%. can you talk a little bit about why that's happening?

It is something we are looking at supervisor. Um, we've looked at staff on leave and the number of staff available to go out and investigate. We just got our onsite review back. And so we will be looking at that more closely to figure out what exactly is occurring. Um, Can't figure out if it's staff on leave or just not available to take work. Is that the problem? March was a very high number, but the number of new immediates has gone down the last few months in terms of the total number of referrals. I reached out to San Diego State. They had offered some assistance in evaluating our ERU program to give us some suggestions. It was one of the things that's in our onsite review to look at, but we don't have a clear idea of why that number continues to decline. It is something that we continue to work with. I do believe supervisors monitoring closely what's happening would help to improve that, especially in terms of closing them. We are bringing on a, this week actually, another retired annuitant will be there to help closed cases. So the number of pending approvals should help raise that number. So it is something we are very concerned about and that we continue to monitor closely. The numbers since September have declined in a way they haven't ever for our department. So it is something we're very concerned about.

Okay. I'm glad you're watching that closely. That is something that's very concerning. And you mentioned that supervisors are working with staff on timely closures and there's an annuitant coming on board. My next question was regarding slide 25 and why over the past four months, the timely closures is also going down. So is that also something that you're monitoring closely and trying to improve?

We are trying to include, yeah. The timely closures of the 30 days, We have a number of pending approvals where the worker has done all of their work and it's waiting to be approved by a supervisor. So bringing on the retired annuitant should help the supervisors who are currently working close those cases to bring those numbers down. Yes.

Okay.

We have one already who's working on it, but she's focusing on the older cases and this one will focus on more current cases.

Okay. And then many of the slides, including slide 26, talked about staffing. So with staff on leave, there's the vacancy rate of about 26%. I know that our labor partners have asked for immediate action to fill vacancies. Director Love, can you talk a little bit about what your department is doing right now to address the situation?

For vacancies, yeah. For the last year, we have been doing continuous hiring, which has resulted in hiring every six weeks, which is different. In the past, we used to hire once or twice a year. We've opened the position up to bachelor's level staff. But as you can see, the return we get, it's a lot of applications. And then very few actually result in hiring. I've just commissioned, is that the right word? Procured a recruiter to assist with recruitment. You may recall that in the end of last year, we did commercials, we did social media campaigns, we did things like LinkedIn. And honestly, in reviewing a lot of the proposals for support In recruitment, we are doing a lot of what everyone is suggesting. I do believe we are running into, this is where I think we may be bumping against the people interested in doing this work. I think the two unions have asked to join and support our work together to hire. And we will be trying to schedule something in the next couple of weeks to see if they have any additional ideas on Friday. We met with the person that is hopefully going to offer some ideas that we have not tried or thought of in terms of recruitment.

Okay. Please keep us posted on that. It definitely seems like filling those vacancies will help us improve things. Just a few more questions. I know that we've got Victor Community Support Services on board for family finding. When do we think we'll have some data that we can review to see how that partnership is going?

I'm hopeful that at the next Social Services Committee, we'll begin to see the work that they're doing so that you have an idea of how it started, what has been accomplished thus far. So at our August Social Services Committee, we'll make sure to include that as part of our report out to you.

Okay, thank you. And can you also share where we're at with creating the independent ombudsperson for complaints?

So where we are is, so that is one of things that are not necessarily in our cap, but in their long-term recommendations from the audit. We are looking for a position and staffing to fill that, I think, It should be noted. It is in the recommendations and we will seek to do it. It's also one of the things that is not in this. It isn't that we hadn't done it because we weren't are not required to do it. We are going to move forward because the state is suggesting because it has come up so many times. Why don't we have one? But there is no state or federal requirement to have an ombudsperson. Andrea Ford has given us permission to find funding for that position and to find a position that fills it. There is one ombudsperson position that she was able to locate. And so I think we'll just be going through the process of creating that position to get it filled. Previously, we didn't actually have an ombudsperson position. We just had a program specialist. But since an ombudsperson position exists in the county will be moving to fill that.

Okay, thank you.

Do you have a sense of what that- Good afternoon, Andrea Ford, Agency Director, Social Services. Just one small point of clarification. If we don't have an internal person, the other suggestion is to contract out with somebody in the community.

Thank you, Director Ford. And do you have a sense of what the timeline will be to get that person on board if we do have an internal person?

I don't have a timeline today, but as we progress in this effort, we'll let you know. We just had the conversation last week after the findings came from the state, the findings and recommendations.

Okay, great. We'll appreciate you giving us a regular update on that. And then lastly, in terms of the dashboard, after Chair Tam shares her questions and comments, it may be helpful to look at the dashboard, maybe looking specifically at our targets for timely investigations, closures, and backlogs, because it seems like we're not going in the right direction. So it might be helpful for this committee to see on screen what those metrics look like right now. We can do that. Thank you. Thank you, Chair Tam.

We can start with that question, because I did want to understand what we consider backlog. Is it A non-response within 30 days. It's like there's usually a certain level of responses that we have to do. But if we don't respond by a certain time, it's considered backlog.

So a backlog is things that were assigned that came in that haven't been closed in the timely time frame. So it is. Pull it up because then we can look at it might be.

My 30 seconds.

Thank you.

I'm sorry, you're looking at the dashboard too?

Yeah, because we can show you that actual backlog.

So if you link to the dashboard there.

The link doesn't work.

Scroll down to the first section. And click on the plus sign for the first by the first loopy for child welfare investigations. And then the first plus sign, the first metric there. So the backlog is represented in part by the number of open referral investigations. So as of the last day of June, there were 1,616 open referrals. So that represents both Referrals that have been accumulated through the month of June, but then referrals that remained open from previous months that had not yet been closed. And so in previous presentations, we've seen that some of those referrals are still remaining open from 2025 and 2024 still. And then.

The backlog is improving. But the timely response has declined.

OK, I know we asked the question last time about. The 800 open referrals and and where do we get that? That's a manageable level that you're trying to get back. That's where we're trying to get OK. So we saw a slight. Increased in the last we had a bump in March.

In March we had an abnormally high number of referrals, right? But you can see it's starting to go back down. So when did the retiree in Newton start? We've had one that's been on for a year. And she's been working on closing older cases and figuring out why they're still open. The new one that was part of a recent recruitment, she starts today, actually. And she's a former child welfare supervisor, so it shouldn't take a lot of training to get her on board.

Okay, so I guess when do you expect that we, you know, given the staffing that we brought on board, whether it's Child Welfare Worker 1, Child Worker 2, do you expect that by next year, the end of next year, we will get closer?

Oh, I'm hoping so. I'm hoping in terms of the backlog, we should see significant improvement in that. over the next six to seven months, I think would be realistic with the additional support. I think what will be key for us is that our supervisors continue to monitor what is happening with new cases coming in.

And you said there was a meet and confer process that you're going through right now. How is that going?

It's... It's still going. Do you need any mediation? I have great hope that we will work to resolve it, but especially we just have the onsite review and some of the same issues are mentioned. I think it's showing in a lot of different places. We need greater support from our supervisors. and monitoring it isn't just the audit i think there are different ways people have interpreted the audit and what it says the on-site review is much plainer language and it speaks to supervisors and what that support needs it also speaks to maybe they need fewer cases so it gives us some ways to assist um them and hopefully bring everybody on board with um what we all are hoping to accomplish.

Okay. Where are our labor partners on that issue?

I mean, in terms of the supervisor, which issue specifically? The monitoring?

Yeah, monitoring the child welfare with the supervisors to more closely monitor because I think What you're saying is by bringing in more supervisors and then filling in the staffing and lowering the vacancy that eventually we will make that dent in the backlog that you're looking at in terms of referrals and investigations. So are they understanding that we have made strides at least in the recruitment effort and the placement effort and reducing the vacancy and also trying to work towards a systematic operational change to have that.

I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I mean, I don't think we have made, I mean, we've are at the beginning of the audit or the end of the audit, our vacancy rate was 35.6%. Right. So we've made significant strides and about, seven months, eight months. I think for staff, it feels like it isn't enough. We are adding two additional units in ERU. One of the things the onsite suggest is maybe we need to lower the staff to supervisor ratio. And that's one of the things we can look at and see if that will assist their feeling of overwhelm and what we are asking them to do in terms of monitoring. Um, I would like to believe that everybody is hoping we all accomplish the same things. I, I, I like to feel that.

Um, supervisor, unfortunately not have asked, did you have any more questions about the dashboard?

No, not at this time.

Okay. So my other questions, uh, deal more with foster care and maybe it's just because I need a little bit more educating because at the end of the day what we're looking for is that all our children including our foster children are well cared for so in terms of like once somebody is placed once a child or non-minor because we're talking about 803 right 607 minors and 196 that are non-minors. That's about 803. So when we place a child, what measures do we take to ensure that we're placing them in a safe environment, for example? And then is there like a maximum number of children that can be placed in one household? Because obviously, we've heard criticisms, including from the Senator herself about some foster families, they just do it for the financial gain, not so much like the ultimate care of the child. And so trying to make sure that the circumstances, because I know you said there's like, it seems like almost two years, the length of stay for some of these placements, right?

And some, some longer. So I would think, um, I think that's the age old criticism of foster care is that people just do it for the money that I would say I have been around for 30 years. I do believe that has changed. The state has also changed what's required of foster parents, the training foster parents go through to become a foster care and relatives. Now that wasn't the case. five years ago that relatives had to do placements. We don't warehouse kids with relative caregivers or foster parents. Typically, there is a finite number that they are interested in taking. Our caregivers are committed to the well-being of our children. I think that often gets lost. I do think the senator does have a history of of having been in foster care when our system was vastly different than it is now, which could, you know, that's your experience. It's a very different system than it was, unfortunately, when she was in care. I do think things are just in terms of a lot more commitment to our youth and ensuring they get what they need. We have fewer youth in group homes and things like that. I don't get the sense that we are warehousing youth We are also committed to youth being with their relatives because we've done enough evaluations over time in the county and in the state across the country that youth do better with their relatives. So what can we do to get as many youth with their relative first and longest, right? If you can't go home to your parents, can you go home to your family? Because that gives you some level of permanence, right? To know your people. And so I think As a county, we are committed to that. First placements with relative and ongoing placements with relative. That's important to us. So I don't get the sense that we have caregivers who are interested in not doing well by our children. And when our workers hear of it, when our placement workers hear of it, we put placements on hold and we won't place with you again. We report you to licensing. We seek to have your license removed so that you can't care for not just our children, but other children that may come into care from another county. So I don't believe there is people taking our youth for the money anymore. What I will say is the rate is going up because caring for youth is expensive. And I think it follows. It should follow, especially in the Bay Area. Housing is expensive. So the state is trying to keep up. I think sometimes in the Bay Area, we're a little bit at a disadvantage because housing is so expensive in the Bay Area. But when we look at the cost of food now as inflation rises, foster care doesn't rise to meet inflation. Foster care is based on the child's needs. So Caregivers get more depending on more of the youth's needs. Therapy appointments, visitation appointments, all those things that can be disrupted to a household, we are asking someone to do in the care of our youth. Our youth have a lot of trauma and a lot of complex factors that go into what is needed to care for them.

Yeah, I appreciate that. You mentioned that there's resources, including behavioral health, and mental health care. Once a child is placed or there is a placement of a non-minor, you said there's follow-ups and visitations and check-ins and have we encountered situations where we've had to take a child out of that placement setting and how often Have you seen that happen?

I don't know that off the top of my head. I don't know that off the top of my head. It's not something we track. I would say we're required to see youth in the home 51% of the time, but we go out and see youth monthly. But 51% of those visits over the course of a year need to be in the home so we can make sure the home is sufficient for a child. But I don't. We'd have to dig and try to figure out the number of how many removals occur from a foster parent.

Do you know, do you have a sense of how many of them rely or need some mental health care support and resources from the county?

The caregivers? Or our youth?

Our youth.

We are working on that for this Friday. That number we have to get from behavioral health, how many of our youth are actually receiving the services. So you will get that next time because we're trying to have that for the task force for this Friday as well.

So those are all the questions I have. I appreciate the updates, especially on the placement and our recruitment efforts and the number of applicants we've received and how that is processed. It sounds like we may not have an application or I mean based on the number of application the recruitments and the number of people that end up being placed there seems to be a very disproportionately limited number yeah so um what are some of the um the partnerships that you you mentioned that we heard from the audit I know they talked about um partnering with Cal State East Bay. You're talking about bringing in a recruiter. And then you're also talking about ways in which we're working with other jurisdictions to increase the likelihood of reducing our frequency.

So they mentioned working with San Diego State was able to help the County of San Diego with their emergency response department. And they had reached out to us early in this audit process. And so I've reached out to them to see what support they might have. We are great partners with Cal State East Bay. We regularly or I regularly participate in meetings and we're constantly looking at ways to help grow their program and also support the county. East Bay is our biggest hire. for their graduates. So we believe, how do we strengthen each other's work?

Okay. Last time we asked this question about, which is getting at the comments that you made about the ombudsman, where if there's a complaint, you said there's a website that they can go to with the Department of Family and Children's Services but it's not all that direct sometimes. I mean, do they come to us first or they go to DFCS first?

So there are a lot of ways a person can file a complaint. The state has their own ombudsperson's office. They could always reach out there. Foster youth have their own foster youth ombudsperson at the state level. In Alameda County, we get complaints in a variety of matters. We have a client concerns for the agency, which is an email address. And when those concerns come in through the department, it is sent to the division that is responsible for and with the goal to respond at the resolve at the lowest level possible. I sometimes get phone calls with concerns. The agency director sometimes will get calls or letters. We both do. So client concerns come in in a host of different ways. I think in addition to our websites in those two ways that people can reach out.

Thank you, Michelle and supervisor. They also contact your individual board offices as well as the state auditor set up an email link so that anyone in the department can voice a concern about issues they might be having as well. OK, so.

I'm just trying to think of how can an ombudsman improve that process, given that there's already ways in which they are trying to make sure their complaints are voiced and heard. Is it the lack of response or a better coordinated effort in responding?

Probably a better coordinated effort. We won't know fully what positive impact they would have until someone is on board. And then it's a neutral party outside of the normal chain of command. So that could be another enhancement.

Okay.

That's helpful. Thank you very much for this update. And I know that you'll give a similar update tomorrow at the board's work session.

Similar for something. Yeah. And supervisors, I do want to say, I know this has been not the report you want to hear, but We do appreciate the interest you and Supervisor Fortunato-Bass have taken to learn what's happening in the department. I've been in the seat a long time. It is nice to have supervisors that are fully interested in the work we are trying to do for the children of Alameda County.

Thank you. Do we have any public comments on this item? I have no speakers for this item.

Okay. Thank you. Next, we'll have an update on our volunteer income tax assistance program for tax season 25-26. As they transition to the podium, we'll have Pamela Powell, the Executive Program Coordinator in the Office of Public Affairs, as well as Marissa Hollenbeck, the Administrative Specialist, also from Public Affairs, and she led the effort this past year. Thank you.

Good afternoon, Vice President Tam and Supervisor Cortonato-Bas. My name again is Pamela Powell, Executive Program Coordinator with the Social Services Agency. And today I'm joined by Marissa Hollenbach, who served as this year's Program Coordinator for the Volunteer Income Tax Assistance Program, or VITA. Together, we have the privilege of supporting the 2025-2026 VITA program, working closely with site coordinators, volunteers, internal team members from the Social Services Agency, and community partners to provide free tax preparation services to Alameda County residents. Next slide, please. So here's the agenda for today's presentation. We'll start with an overview of the VITA program and why it matters. Then we'll review program impact by site covering total returns, average adjusted gross income, or AGI, and the population served. We'll then discuss the key highlights and outcomes and our next steps in preparation for the 2026-2027 tax season. And we will conclude with recognizing our amazing volunteers. Next slide. So as you may know, the Alameda County Social Services Agency has partnered with the United Way Bay Area's Free Tax Help Program since 2002 to offer free tax preparation services to low and moderate income individuals and families through VITA sites across the county. The VITA program helps residents file accurate tax returns, navigate the tax system, and access refunds and credits such as the Earned Income Tax Credit all at no charge. The Earned Income Tax Credit, or EITC, is a refundable federal credit that supports working families and individuals as it works as an effective tool to reduce poverty. Eligibility is determined by income, filing status, and the number of qualifying children. Additionally, this program aligns with the Alameda County's Vision 2036 goals of building a thriving and resilient population and supporting a prosperous and vibrant economy by increasing financial stability and access to resources in underserved communities. Next slide, please. So for many households, tax refunds help cover basic needs like housing, food, transportation, childcare, and everyday expenses. So VITA is important because it creates equitable access to free, trustworthy tax preparation, ensuring that individuals and families can meet their financial responsibilities without added stress or cost barriers. According to the National Society of Accountants, or NSA, income and fees of accountants In Tax Repairs and Public Practice Survey Report, a simple tax return prepared by a private tax service can range from $200 to $400, an amount that many households simply cannot afford. FIDA removes this burden, allowing people to keep more of their refund and use those dollars where they're needed most. Now, I'll hand it over to Marissa, who will walk us through the data for each site.

Thank you, Pamela. Again, my name is Marcia Hollenbeck. I had the privilege of managing the VITA program again this year. Before I go into the individual data for each site, I'll briefly share overall figures from the VITA program. For the 2025-2026 season, we filed over 2,050 tax returns between our three sites. This slide shows the total amount of refunds issued through the VITA program. And as you can see, the total amount we've secured, 3.4 million in total refunds, over $980,000 in total earned income tax credits, over $1 million in total child tax credits, and over $20,000 in total education credits. These figures represent dollars returned directly to Alameda County households. And additionally, our community saved an estimated $960,000 by choosing VITA. Next slide. OK. Next, we'll take a closer look at each VITA site. At our enterprise site, we primarily serve tax filers who live in the East Oakland and San Leandro area. Total tax returns filed, 788. I-10 count is 17. And the average adjusted gross income or EJI of tax filers at this site was around 41,000. This reflects that we are primarily assisting low to moderate income households. For filing status, we had 192 head of household returns, 100 married filing jointly, and 496 single filers. For age demographics, and while I won't read them all, I will highlight the largest group of filers were 65 to 84 years at 20.5%, and tax filers under 25 years of age, making up our smallest group at 9.6%. 78% of tax filers spoke English, 15.7% were Spanish speakers, and 5.9 spoke other languages. Next slide. Next, at our Gale Steel site, we primarily served tax filers who lived in Hayward, Castro Valley, Union City, and San Leandro. Total tax returns filed, 726. I-10 count is 20. And the average AGI of tax filers at this site was 44,000. For filing status, we had head of household, 105, married filing jointly 142 and single 479. And as you can see on the screen here, nearly half of all of our filers were age 55 or older, whereas 8% were under the age of 25. 69% of tax filers spoke English, 16.6 spoke Spanish, 4% spoke Cantonese, and 10.4% communicated in other languages. Next slide. At our Thomas L. Berkeley site, we primarily serve tax filers who lived in North Oakland, Berkeley, Hayward, and San Leandro. Total tax returns filed, 524, and the ITIN count is 4. The average adjusted gross income of tax filers at this site was $41,000. For filing status, we had head of household, 113, married filing jointly, 62, and single, 349 filers. The age distribution here shows a balanced mix of adults across all age groups with the strongest participation from those 55 and older. Ages 25 to 54 were well represented at about 14 to 15% each and 9% under the age of 25. 79.7% of filers spoke English as their primary language, 9.8% spoke Spanish, while 10.6 spoke other languages. Next slide. This slide shows the racial and ethnic makeup of tax filers across all sites. Many tax filers identified as Black or African American and Latinx or Hispanic, making these two groups the largest across all sites. Tax filers who identified as Asian represented the third largest group of individuals served. Altogether, this data provides a picture of who we served across age groups, language needs, and communities throughout Alameda County. Next slide. This season, next we'll go into our key highlights and outcomes. And this season, we introduced a new weekly communication series called This Week at VITA to keep volunteers better informed and engaged. Each update included tax updates and important changes or clarifications volunteers needed to know, weekly reminders, any operational notes, volunteer signups, and signing in to track volunteer hours. And it also included a volunteer spotlight, a quick shout out highlighting a volunteer each week to help build that community and recognize contributions. And it also includes additional resources, so any links to tools, guides, and training materials. As an evaluation component, we provided an end-of-season survey and volunteers responded very positively about the communications, noting that the weekly updates helped them feel more informed and connected. Overall, this new communication approach worked to improve clarity, consistency, and engagement across the program.

Next slide.

This year, we continued our partnership with the Independent Living Program, or ILP. And through that partnership, we assisted 19 foster youth, helping them file their taxes and access eligible credits. In addition, we delivered an outreach presentation to a community organization to raise awareness of VITA services and expand our reach. Next slide. This season, we launched the VITA apprenticeship, an opportunity for interns to gain experience while supporting this program. Through this apprenticeship, our interns will strengthen their workforce readiness, contribute valuable operational support, engage directly in public services, and help us strengthen overall program capacity by expanding our outreach to both clients and volunteers, ensuring more people know about and can benefit from the VITA program. Our intern, Brittany Lampkin, built an expanded outreach database covering universities, libraries, community event spaces, coffee shops, and nonprofits to broaden our community reach. She also developed internal and external website proposals to improve clarity, helping community members access VITA services, appointment instructions, and tax preparation guidance without confusion. She created a year-round social media plan to support volunteer recruitment and retention, connect Alameda County residents to free tax preparation services, and position VITA as a civic engagement initiative. In addition, she drafted a series of onboarding scripts to produce new awareness and onboarding videos. I'd like to introduce Brittany, who will share a brief reflection on their experience participating in this inaugural apprenticeship.

Thank you, Marissa. Good afternoon, Vice Chair Tam and Supervisor Fortunato-Bass. My name is Brittany Lampkin. I'm excited to share my reflections and experience with VITA over the past several months. I first joined the program as a volunteer and served as an apprentice supporting internal operations, communication and program infrastructure. Experiencing the program from both perspectives gave me a unique view of what was working as well as future opportunities. As a volunteer, I saw a program that delivers meaningful results. Volunteers showed up and people received assistance. What stood out to me, however, was That the program often presents itself primarily as a tax preparation service. While that service is valuable, I believe a deeper purpose of work. I believe that the deeper purpose of this work is something larger, and that is neighbors helping neighbors. This distinction matters because it influences how people experience their role. People may initially join to prepare taxes, but they stay when they feel connected to a mission, a community, and a sense of shared purpose. As an apprentice, I worked on projects that support the program's infrastructure, including volunteer communications, onboarding materials, outreach resources, website improvements, and long-term planning tools. The program is operationally successful, but many of the functions that sustain volunteer engagement rely heavily on goodwill. Recruitment, retention, community partnerships, volunteer recognition, storytelling, and outreach are all essential to the program's continued success, yet they compete for attention alongside day-to-day demands of running a large tax assistance program. In practical terms, the program is asking operational leadership to carry both program management and community stewardship responsibilities at the same time. With that, my recommendation, which has been accepted for the next iteration, is to establish two distinct areas of ownership, one focused on program operations and one focused on community engagement and volunteer stewardship. The first ensures the program runs efficiently. The second ensures the mission remains visible, volunteers remain engaged, partnerships continue to grow and that the community understands the value of the work being done. Without dedicating attention to the second function, the program risks losing momentum over time. With it, VITA can remain one of Alameda County's strongest examples of civic engagement in action. I recognize that creating additional capacity is a significant investment for those running the program. However, After experiencing VITA from both the volunteer and operational perspective, I believe strengthening this area would support the program's sustainability, resilience, and long-term impact. Thank you for your consideration.

Thank you, Brittany, for sharing your experience. Next slide. As we look ahead to next season, our focus is on strengthening the VITA program in three key areas, volunteer recruitment, training, and site operations. Under volunteer recruitment, we plan to explore partnerships with community colleges to create stronger pathways for student volunteers, including opportunities for academic credit, increase our engagement with community-based organizations, local partners, and networks that can help us reach retirees, older adults, and other community members interested in the free service as well as volunteering. We'll also utilize the existing social media plan and coordinate the marketing efforts to support recruitment, increase awareness, and provide timely reminders for tax filers. Under training and orientation, we aim to enhance volunteer preparedness by strengthening our training materials with mock interviews, hands-on practice opportunities, and e-learning videos, and we'll also create easy to use reference guides for common tax scenarios and troubleshooting issues that arise during any appointments.

Next slide.

Another key area is focusing on strengthening site operations and planning for the program's long-term growth. Under site operations, we plan to continue partnering with County ITD to enhance the VITA client website so residents can more easily access eligibility information, resources, and appointment details. We'll also explore an administrative support team to improve responsiveness to tax filers and help sites run more efficiently during peak times. And finally, we want to integrate a post-filing survey so we can gather direct feedback from tax filers and use that information to guide service improvements. For next steps, we are looking to expand the VITA apprenticeship based on the success of this first season, We'll also work with our IRS spec partner to explore Alameda County Social Services VITA sites and becoming certifying acceptance agency sites, which would allow us to expand individual taxpayer identification number or ITIN services and better support residents with those needs. Although we saw a small decrease from 43 individuals in the 2024-2025 tax season to 41 individuals in this past season, the number of community members filing with ITINs remains steady. This indicates an ongoing need for accessible, reliable ITIN assistance, and it's an opportunity for our agency to strengthen and expand its ITIN support. And lastly, we intend to increase community outreach presentations and deepen partner engagement to further expand awareness and accessibility of ITIN services. These key areas are where we see the program growing, not just operationally, but in its role as a community resource and a civic engagement initiative.

Next slide.

And next I'll hand it over to Pamela.

So as we close out our work on highlights, I'd like to take a moment to recognize the volunteers who make this work possible. First, our site coordinators and transmitters. Our site coordinators manage the day-to-day operations of each site and ensure that every tax filer who walks through the door receives quality service. Their leadership directly contributes to the success and reliability of our sites. Our transmitters play an equally critical role behind the scenes. They're responsible for the accurate and timely electronic submissions of returns, helping ensure compliance, security, and smooth processing of every tax filer we serve. And so they're serving more in a quality assurance role. Next slide. So as we move into the next few slides, you'll see the names of our volunteers who supported the VITA program throughout the season. While I won't read each name individually, I do want to express our deep appreciation for every person listed. Each volunteer, whether serving as a preparer, greeter, intake specialist, site coordinator, or transmitter, played an essential role in helping Alameda County residents access free, reliable tax preparation. Their time and commitment are what make the VITA program possible. Next slide. And then next slide again. So before we close, again, we'd like to thank our partners, including but not limited to the Alameda County Board of Supervisors, the County Administrator, County ITD, our internal team members from the Finance Department, the IRS, and the United Way of the Bay Area, whose collaboration makes it possible for VITA to continue. Thank you, and any questions?

Thank you. This is a great presentation and definitely a wonderful program to get $3.4 million worth of refund, tax refund, with just 2,000 filers. You're averaging about $1,600 in refund. That's impressive. The board also wants to thank all the volunteers because I know without them, the program would not be as successful as it is. Do we get the same level of volunteer that we had last tax season? And we've seen more filers this time around?

We had a little bit more volunteers this year, probably about additional 20 or so.

Okay.

And I'll just add that this season, what we saw was that volunteers were staying throughout the course of the entire season. So we've seen some kind of drop off in the first couple of weeks, but we noticed the sustainability of the volunteers throughout this season.

Okay. Do we have a listserv that we typically outreach to for people that might need these services? Or how do people know that this service is available to them?

Your outreach plan. Our outreach plan so. So mostly social media and then we're also sending out flyers. We have partnerships with some of the local high schools and so we're telling them you know whenever you're out in the community just to really let us know. But that was something that Brittany noticed and in her recommendations with that really honing in on outreach and how we can start earlier in the year.

OK, and do we have? The partnerships that we have with the United Way, do they enable us to help the filers do e-filing, or is it just something that's already available through the IRS and Franchise Tax Board?

Okay, so the ILP, there's like about four workshops, two for February and March. And we go there and we do a presentation and it's like we guide them in filing their taxes for them. So it's a presentation. And United Way Bay Area has a pre-filing service that's specific to them that's free. So we guide them through that process.

Okay.

That's great.

Because it wasn't free for a lot of other people, I'm sure. Thank you. Thank you so much for this presentation.

Do we have any public comments on this item? I have no speakers on this side. Okay.

I know Supervisor Fortunato-Bass had to drop off, right?

Okay. I also want to thank the volunteers. Supervisor Tam, because without them, without their commitment over the last 20 plus years, we wouldn't be able to be successful at this. And also saw a lot of familiar names who are listening. So a shout out to the volunteers who are online here listening to this presentation. And to Brittany, thank you for being our first apprentice. I wanted at least five apprentices for this program for the last couple of years, so thanks to Brittany for making it happen and laying the groundwork.

Yeah, we should. We should have a party or something for you and all the volunteers. Thank you so much.

OK, today's final presentation is an update by the Alameda County Workforce Development Board. I'm led by Rhonda Boykin, director, and Carl Pasquale, the management analyst, supporting this work.

Thank you, Andrea. And good afternoon, Supervisor Tam. Carl and I will be presenting the Alameda County Workforce Development Board's end of the year WIOA, or Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act, program update. Next slide. Today, we will cover Updates on services are activities and performance outcomes for our provider network. What's currently happening in the labor market for Alameda County? Our current initiatives and partnerships and also how we're engaging with businesses and will we will conclude with legislative impacts. Next slide. I've shared this with you and the other Board of Supervisors, but I wanted to uplift this particular item again of how the Alameda County Workforce Development Board receive recognition and designation as a high performing board. And we're very proud of this achievement. And I would like to take this opportunity to acknowledge and appreciate the hard work and dedication in the innovation of our staff, service providers and partners that made this achievement possible. And also I would like to express a big thanks for the Board of Supervisors support and leadership to the staff and to the board as well as our board members. And we have here a photo of a portion of our board that represents Business, our WIOA regulations require us to have a majority of members that represent business. And so some of the businesses that are currently on our board, I'll briefly call them out. Evolve Manufacturing, Casa Sanchez, you probably have enjoyed her chips and salsa. Tarani, Berkeley National Lab, Corporate E-Waste, And representing economic development, we have Hayward Chamber of Commerce in the East Bay Economic Development Alliance. And for our education seat for adult schools, Pleasanton Unified School District. And representing our labor organizations, SMART, SMW Local, Union 104, and SEIU United Healthcare Workers. And our CBOC, REAP Climate Center. These volunteers dedicate 20 hours a year to provide leadership and set policy and priorities for employment training and education for job seekers and employers of Alameda County. Next slide. Our WIOA funded programs provide career and employment services for adults and dislocated workers These programs encompass individualized services for enrolled participants and basic services that are open to all. Some of those basic services include access to labor market information, resume and interview workshops, job events, and we track about 13,000. We call them universal job seekers. that are touching our workforce system in accessing these services that I described. For some of the services for our participants, our program participants who are enrolled, their services include job search and coaching, case management services, and access to occupational training opportunities. We prioritize our services for Alameda County residents outside the city of Oakland, as there is a workforce board for Oakland, the Oakland Workforce Development Board. We have a sub-regional model in which a career center is located in the four sub-regions of Alameda County, and they're also aligned in each supervisorial district. So you could see in the map here we have North cities. Representing North cities are providing career services in North cities. It's loud family community development. Rubicon programs for the Eden area and for Tri cities. It's a lonely Community College or the lonely. Lonely come. Career center and. Tri-Valley Career Center covers and provides services in the Tri-Valley area. Now for targeted populations, International Rescue Committee or IRC, we contracted with them for one year and their services have been extended to target WIOA services for our refugee and asylee populations across Alameda County. Next slide. Our youth services are also sub-regionally located in the county. Our youth services prepare our youth and young adults for the world of work. Those services include tutoring and support, guidance and counseling, and work experience and leadership development. 75% of our youth funding supports out-of-school youth, which covers the age range of 16 to 24 year olds. Our service providers, as you can see on the map, are IRC, La Familia, and Ohlone College. Typically, these youth are challenged with various barriers like not completing high school or its equivalent. They have housing insecurity issues or a lack of work experience. 25% of our youth is allocated to in-school youth, and the providers are the Eden Area Regional Occupation Program and the Tri-Valley ROP. Next slide. Our participant outcomes for program year 2025-26 For adults and dislocated workers, we have enrolled approximately or over 400 individuals into our program, and 50% of those that were enrolled entered employment, and nearly 80% of the jobs that they attained were in priority sectors, such as healthcare, manufacturing, or professional services that also offered good wages. For our youth programs, we enrolled over 230 youth. Nearly 100% of them received work-based learning experience, which is real work exposure through workplace tours, informational interviews, job shadowing, mentoring, paid or unpaid internships, and work experience. Youth placement activities consists of placement and employment, advanced training, post-secondary education, or the military. And our in-school youth were at 75% and our out-of-school youth at 44.5%. Overall, the wheel of performance goals have either met or exceeded state performance requirements. And this consistent level of performance in our core programs has contributed to our high performing board certification. So now I'm going to hand it over to Carl to provide the labor market update.

Good afternoon. This first slide shows the unemployment rate trend. This shows that Alameda County's unemployment rate has declined since the 2020 peak of 8.5% during the COVID-19 pandemic. And as of today, as of May 2026, it's at 3.8%, which is about a half percent better than the U.S. average. So when you look at this chart, it kind of begs the question, how did Alameda County recover post-pandemic? And part of the answer is in the next slide. This table shows that since 2020, healthcare, government, manufacturing, and hospitality jobs have increased the most in Alameda County. The top line from left to right shows that healthcare and social assistance sector had the most jobs in the county at nearly 138,000 jobs as of 2025. The average earnings for that same year per worker was about $91,000. And if you go to the next column, it says the 2025 LQ, which stands for location quotient, is 1.14. That means that in this sector, the concentration in Alameda County is 14% higher than comparable urban areas in the nation. And the final stat at the far right shows that in the period between 2020 and 2025, the same period that we saw unemployment stabilize after COVID, the healthcare and social assistance sector grew by nearly 21%. And so this shows that this sector was an employment driver from COVID until now. I'll just comment on the number two government sector had the second most jobs at nearly 123,000 with the average earnings of 146,000 per year. The LQ or location quotient is about one. So that aligns with the national average and the sector grew by 6% for that same time period. So again, government jobs are a driver of employment over that period. And if you continue down towards the bottom, we have accommodation and food services or hospitality had the most growth of jobs at 25%, but represents about half as many jobs and much lower pay. So altogether, these are three drivers of employment growth since the pandemic. All right. So we see what got us here. Now we'll talk about current factors that affect employment today. Next slide. Here the headline is that artificial intelligence is the fastest growing in-demand skill in job postings between May and July, 2026 in Alameda County. This table is a ranking of job skills that are most frequently mentioned in live job postings for jobs in Alameda County over the last 90 days. So again, we're talking about May through July 2026, very recent data. In other words, what skills do job seekers need to have for positions that are open right now? Lightcast, our labor market information provider, calculates this by analyzing publicly available job postings from every public source. And I spoke with them last week, and they said it was over 3,300 sources in Alameda County. So this is a top 10 list of skills. Number one is workflow management. Number two is project management. And number three is artificial intelligence, AI. This includes skills and competencies that reference AI, starting from coding and cybersecurity all the way to utilization of AI tools. So if we look at the column on the far right, artificial intelligence as a named skill, it's increased by 92.5% in the last 90 days. So in other words, in postings over the last three months, AI is mentioned double than the number of postings in February, March and April. So that's showing you the acceleration in which AI is referenced in these open job postings. So there has been this prevalent narrative that modern workers need to learn AI tools to remain competitive? Well, this chart quantifies exactly how much, an increasing amount, especially right now. There's another narrative out there that AI is eliminating jobs, and so that leads us to the next slide. Here's the headline. Administrative and office workers are at the highest risk of being displaced by artificial intelligence in the future. So we know that AI can automate and augment tasks that are routine, rules-based, or language-driven. Earlier this year, Lightcast published a report utilizing research from the Harvard Business Review about the impact of AI on jobs. This report analyzed what job functions are at the highest risk of being displaced by AI right now into the future. And they call it AI exposure. Okay. So this table is a top 10 list of the most AI exposed jobs. So core functions like writing, editing, and researching constitute a majority of many administrative and office jobs. And if you just look at the chart, you can see the different types of administrative and office jobs. those are being at the highest risk of being displaced. And so the report concludes that for workers to remain in these roles, they will need to develop skills and capabilities that AI can't do yet. Critical thinking, content expertise and experience, and the ability to guide critique and refine AI generated content. So if these are the most AI exposed jobs, What are the jobs that are safest or least exposed to AI? And that's the next slide. The headline here is that skilled healthcare jobs are at the lowest risk of being displaced by artificial intelligence in the future. This table shows the top 10 least AI exposed jobs. And if you do a quick survey, you'll see that there are some, yes, manual labor jobs. but the majority are healthcare and first responder jobs that require direct human interaction. So AI can increase productivity or accuracy for these positions, but AI cannot automate the core functions of these positions. So one of the conclusions we can make is get into these jobs. Now our WIOA program services We really serve, as you've seen in the map earlier, a diverse pool of job seekers from a wide range of education, skill sets, and work histories. So the question is, how are we preparing them for the new reality that was on display in these last few slides? Next slide, please. So here's the headline. Our enrolled participants are choosing AI and healthcare-related training and certifications. So as Rhonda explained, our enrolled participants have extra coaching, extra case management, and they develop training and education plans with case managers and coaches directly. And one benefit that WIOA provides is funding for training and certification from an approved list of programs. So over the past program year, which just ended June 30th, 2026, We spent over a million dollars to support 249 job seekers with this training benefit. This pie chart shows the top training programs chosen by our participants. Now, with the exception of a commercial driver's license training, the rest of the training chosen by our participants are AI or healthcare related. And this directly reflects the demand for these skills in our current economy. Let me drill down a little bit for one of these. You'll see that the third piece of the pie there, which is the third most requested training program, is an AI-driven administrative assistant. Now, this program is a certification-level vocational training program by the California Institute of Career Development designed to prepare entry-level students for admin and office support roles enhanced by AI enabled productivity tools. So we're kind of in this transition. One slide I showed you previously showed that admin and office jobs are at the most risk, highest risk, right? But what we're seeing is that in order to get even those jobs, you need a high level of AI proficiency to even be considered for those jobs. And that's why many of our students, again, are choosing this as an option. Now, we do have a fairly limited pool of funds to support individual training. Rhonda will explain how we use partnerships and initiatives to expand the number of participants we can serve.

Thank you, Carl. We do pursue on discretionary funds and, you know, to be a strong workforce board, you need to have more than just WIOA funds. And so our team has been very diligent as well as working with our fund agency fund developer. It's been very successful in enabling us to achieve and receive additional funding. But as we leverage non-WIOA funds to support initiatives and partnerships, What this enables us to do is to broaden our service footprint in Alameda County, pilot programs for targeted populations, and meet industry-specific needs. And through these additional resources, we have served over 1,000 individuals. And I've presented on some of these programs, I believe, in October, so I'll just give a few updates. on our high road training partnership, which is a regional initiative across Alameda and Contra Costa County and involves the other East Bay workforce boards. We are focused on the maritime industry and to date we've enrolled 124 participants, 88% have completed the training and 84% have earned a credential. This program is expected to end in June 30th, 2027. And we'll be working towards the goal of enrolling 300 individuals in this partnership. We also have spent the last year or more building our capacity and knowledge in the area of apprenticeships. And now we are engaging with partners to launch apprenticeship programs, as well as we are making efforts to find paths to enroll our program participants in current existing apprenticeships that are available. The process for apprenticeships can be very complex and difficult to navigate. And our role with businesses will be to provide the technical assistance that small employers who want to consider apprenticeship to meet their talent pipeline needs. Next slide. These initiatives and partnerships here will be sunsetting or some of them have already sunset by the end of the year. But the American Rescue Plan, the ARPA, we have wanted to say the unincorporated got cut off there, but we received funding from this board to implement workforce development programming in the unincorporated areas. One of the final projects or initiatives is our digital literacy project. To date, we have enrolled 117 individuals, In this program, an 88 percent have earned a certificate of completion. Each successful completer received a laptop. Not having a laptop or possessing the digital literacy skills has been a barrier to many individuals getting a job or a better job. This project, for those that have enrolled and successfully completed it has remove this barrier. We have applied for several grants in hopes to scale this programming across the county, but also add a component for AI literacy as a part of the curriculum. And we will keep you posted on those funding outcomes. Next slide. Our business services are offered through our provider network with an emphasis on helping employers meet their talent pipeline needs. They host job fairs, employer-focused workshops, and on-site recruitment, and they also post job leads. And our internal business services team, they work with businesses to engage them to support upskilling of their current workforce, and we subsidize various training services. Now, we've made investments for the business community for access to the no-cost HR consultant services through our partnership with the California Employers Association. And we also, through the on-the-job training program, we reimburse employers up to 50% of an employee's wage when they hire a participant enrolled in our programs. These services and resources help our business community to meet their employment goals. Next slide. Our business services team coordinates the response when we receive the worn or the worker adjustment retaining, retraining, pardoning notice or layoff notice. We receive them from companies with 50 or more employees for program year 25, 26. over 3,000 employees were impacted by a layoff or a company closure. The most layoffs were in manufacturing, technology, and the healthcare sectors. Over 52 companies reported these layoffs, and regionally, the highest number of impacted employees were companies in the Tri-City and Tri-Valley sub-regions. Our business services team conducted over 21 rapid response orientations for working with over 700 individuals, impacted employees, and there were additional 50 that we were connected through our open rapid response. Rapid response is basically we bring in a team of individuals from um, covered California, the employment development department, as well as our service providers. And we, in these orientations, we provide the necessary information and resources that these impacted workers need during their transition to new employment. Carl, I'm going to turn it back over to Carl. He's going to discuss our business engagement events and activities.

Okay. Um, Thank you. This slide shows some recent events organized by our business engagement action team that bring industry and sector experts together to promote networking, but also provide education to them who are interested in the very specific topics. So the last three roundtables we had covered apprenticeship pathways. So those partners that are interested in developing apprenticeship in order to solidify their workforce. We also had an AI and cybersecurity employment panel that talked about how AI and cybersecurity are affecting their particular business. And then this last one was a partnership with the Union City to address members of their manufacturing hub for recruiting, training, and retaining talent. Altogether, these three events brought over 100 participants representing businesses across educational institutions and providers and offer a good amount of networking amongst colleagues that are dealing with similar issues. Okay, and then we're going to go to legislative impacts. One more slide before the contact list, I believe. If you go backwards two slides. And there's just two we want to reference before we end the proposal. One more back. Whoops. Yeah. Oh, okay. So we don't have to wait. There are two legislative impacts that we are really looking at and addressing.

Okay, Carl. Well, we're going to conclude with a this legislative impacts, one of which is HR1, the new work requirements for CalFresh and Medi-Cal recipients. Workforce boards have been called out to assist with providing qualifying work activities and just want to acknowledge that this is an unfunded mandate. Our data that we, in our look back over past couple of years, 26% of our enrolled WIOA participants self-report that they are on CalFresh. But just due to the sheer volume of the individuals who may need assistance and support with work activities, we have advocated for more funding to Congress through the PAL process. And we submitted our request in March and it was approved in April. And so it is our hope that Congress will see the need to provide the necessary funding for us to assist, but we are committed as the Workforce Development Board to delivering services using the available resources that we have. We are expanding our online training program to serve individuals not enrolled in WIOA. This online platform offers access to more than 7,000 programs through which individuals can earn certification to improve their job skills. And it also has built in tracking of hours to report hours spent online on online training. We're also exploring pilot programs like transitional jobs, which is a paid time limited or subsidized work experience. experience for individuals with barriers to employment and supervised job search activities. All of these efforts will be doing as a part of offering qualifying activities to help CalFresh and then soon to come Medi-Cal recipients to meet the work requirements. The other area of concern for us right now is the Office of Management and Budget. has proposed changes to the uniform guidance for federal grants that can not only affect WIOA programs, but other federal programs as well. These changes we believe will create new administrative burdens, limit local flexibility, and make it challenging for workforce boards to serve our communities. These specific Provisions would require prior approval for conference attendance and effect Association membership. I also like to add we reference like cast. It also limits the use of funding for like cast an entity which provides labor market information. So it is very concerning for us if these changes should be approved. it is noted that there's been a comment period and it's now closed, but there were thousands of comments related to some of these changes. Oh, and I did one big concern for us is that the termination, the potential for the termination of awards without an appeal. This has never been our concern. formula funds have never been subject to these type of requirements. This is a big concern for the workforce boards. We'll monitor the proposed changes and keep you informed. This concludes our presentation and open for questions.

Thank you. I will start with that last. comment first or the last item. So we know about the ABOD requirements associated with Medi-Cal eligibility and CalFresh. And do we have a sense of the best way of like integrating that? Because will we know when People are getting dropped off because they don't meet the job requirements and then how do we like? Integrate them into the workforce development aspects of it.

So I'll ask the first question. We will know when they drop off a bot was implemented in June of this year and it's for Cal Fresh recipients. The first group of recipients would drop off either September or October. but they would have had to apply on June 1st to drop off in September, so more than likely in October. We will see that first decline. And I'll let Rhonda or Carl answer the second part of this.

Yeah, I mean, we're working closely with our social services partners to make sure that we are bringing in the community and other, the adult schools, the community colleges, and other CBO or community-based organizations to identify qualifying activities so that as individuals inquire or they're assessed to determine how many hours that they need to meet, that they can be connected to the services. We believe that the individuals may need to participate in a number of a couple of different activities for those that are not who are not working at least 20 hours a week. So we anticipate we've notified our service providers that if individuals should come to the career centers to inquire about how they can meet that we would have these programs that I mentioned set up so that they can be either assessed to participate, depending on what their specific situation is, that they would be routed to participate in the online training program or enrolled in the WIOA programs. Like last year, we served about 400 individuals and I acknowledge that about 26% of them acknowledged or self-reported. We've made changes to request that individuals who enroll or seek WIOA services, tell us that they are, you know, on CalFresh. It was optional, but we're asking to make sure that they receive the right guidance to, you know, make sure that they're in an activity that will enable them to meet the requirements.

So Rhonda, can you briefly just explain the work you're doing with Aurora? Because we're one of seven pilot counties.

Yeah, so we are, as Andrea mentioned, We are one of seven counties that are participating with a consulting organization, and they've been working with us to help navigate, and they're going to be developing some tools for us to use. I think one tool that will be under development is an online training platform, also a tool that will enable Individuals who need have questions about how many hours they need to do. They can input some information and this tool would give them a sense of what activities that they need to do in the number of hours and what's available. We're on a probably about our third or fourth meeting and. We're learning best practices you know from other counties who are faced with this same situation. We have several different strategies that we're working towards in terms of just educating our service providers, our community partners, educating our participants, our clients, so that they can be informed and aware of these changes that have gone in effect June and be able to connect them to the resources and the activities.

And so, Supervisor, we'll get more information and we'll provide that at one of the joint health and social service meetings to keep you all informed and updated.

Thank you. I look forward to that because I know some of the organizations, the nonprofits, are awfully concerned with, like, they may be nonprofits and they may have volunteer opportunities, but that's only limited in terms of the 80 hours a month or something. Yeah. Okay. Appreciate that. Just some clarification. clarifying questions. So we've had a number of budget presentations at the board, and it's been showing that you hear about these layoffs in the tech sector, but it shows that from your graphic on page seven, we're actually not doing that badly when it comes to unemployment. So how do we reconcile what we've been hearing and seeing.

Yeah, a growth sector such as manufacturing and tech does not mean it's without layoffs. Layoffs are often a result of the competition in the area. So, you know, as some businesses in those sectors expand in this competition, it means other businesses may have to, yes, or close a center. So we are in this transition period. I would still say that those sectors, healthcare, tech, manufacturing, remain drivers, but we're also going to see a lot of turnover.

Okay. On page nine, your second highest in terms of fastest growing in demand scale, what is scalability?

Supervisor, before Carl addresses the question, I also just wanted to say what's reflected on our report our layoffs for in terms of the tech industry are for tech companies that are in Alameda County. Some of the bigger counties, I mean, bigger tech companies are outside of Alameda County. So those numbers are not going to be reflected there.

Makes sense.

I believe the scalability skill set is taking one process or product line and and then being able to apply those principles and bring it to scale. So for example, in a startup, you're dealing with relatively small quantities of product. So they want folks who know about operations and such to be able to bring it to scale.

Okay.

Expand, if you will.

Got it. Appreciate that. So on page 16, so the manufacturing, like you said earlier, and transportation and warehouse sector, I guess this is in Alameda County. have seen, I guess, the most need in terms of rapid response or the most layoffs in the past 12 months. Are they being displaced by AI or are they just moving out of the state or out of the area?

I would say that a lot of the layoffs, it's a combination. some companies are closing, some are laying off. I'm not sure if employers at this time are saying that they are laying off due to AI. So some part of that is not known. When we get the notices, they don't necessarily give an explanation as to the reason. But there are some that basically state it's a closure. The business is closing and relocating or just closing. But sometimes those other reasons are not made known.

Yeah, I can appreciate how we don't always get that with the Warren notice. But I was just thinking, for example, the Tesla factory in Fremont, they moved a lot of their car manufacturing to Texas, for example, but they're converting, based on what the assessor tells me, the Fremont plant into doing robotics, but that's probably not going to involve as many people in terms of the manufacturing process.

Yeah, so automation is another driving factor. AI is a skill set and the ability to use a new type of service information source, but automation, like robotic and such, means that the same output can be performed by less human employees with that capital investment. So I think that our proximity to Silicon Valley means that we are experiencing, it's kind of a test case for a lot of the different strategies that businesses are using now. And so in some ways, what we're seeing here in Alameda County, we can see as a precursor to what's going to happen in the rest of the country.

OK, great, thank you. It's been very informative presentation and update. Do we have any public comments on? Item number 3. I have no speakers for item 3. OK, do we have any public comments on items that are not on today's agenda, but within their purview of the Social Services Committee?

There are no speakers for public comment.

Hearing none, we will see you in August and some of you tomorrow.

Pardon?

My mistake. We'll see you in September. This meeting is adjourned. Thank you.