Homeless Issues Committee - Regular Meeting

Thank you all for being here. Can we get roll call? Absolutely. Chair Holliman? Here. Vice Chair Welch? Here. Amy Brown? Here. I'm so sorry. Can I have somebody from the audience try and talk again? I just want to make sure we have sound.

I'm trying to talk. Can you hear me?

Yes, we can.

Thank you. Okay.

Supervisor Aria Trucos?

Trucios? Trucios here. Thank you.

Beth Freeman? Here. Lieutenant Eric Vosburgh?

I'm here.

Pope Edgar? Not with us quite yet. Janelle here. Johnny Milton is not with us quite yet. Molly Caradona is not with us quite yet. Nellie. Shannon Berry. Cheryl Cato is not with us quite yet. Sonia Liston did resign, but we are working on filling that position. Lieutenant Trevor Greber is not with us quite yet.

And then Vanessa Stato, not with us quite yet, but we do have Cora. Thank you so much. First order of business is consideration of minutes. I have the April minutes and the May minutes. I will need a motion to approve April minutes.

So moved. This is Barry. Do we have a second?

Trucio, second.

Thank you. Is there any discussion? All in favor, aye. Aye. Any nays? Any abstentions? Okay, next is the mayor. minutes can i have an emotion to forward that i'll move shannon thank you and i can i get a second this is beth i can second thank you beth any discussion all right all in favor aye any objections any abstentions and that passes We do not have any action items or presentations. So we are going to start with agency updates. Jennifer, you are first. That is on my screen. So I'm going to start with you.

Hey, everybody. I'm Jennifer Ginsburg. I'm the executive director of St. Carver Child Advocacy Center. And our only announcement is that we are recruiting and hiring for a bilingual family advocate. If anybody has any good connections, please send it along. Otherwise, I don't think I have any other news to report. Thanks. Thank you so much.

Shannon.

Good morning, everyone. Shannon Berry, Executive Director for DAIS, Domestic Abuse Intervention Services. We have a few updates. We continue to be hiring for variable part-time shelter advocates and crisis intervention advocates, as well as a shelter coordinator. All of our other positions have been filled. I have made some program, or excuse me, some staffing changes adjustments due to additional pending cuts from funding. So we have decided to forego our operations manager as well as our director of development. So I will be taking over management of our development and fundraising team, which is going to be a big lift given all of the other gaps that we have to fill. So that's it for me. Oh, and the other, sorry, last thing. We are also launching a young professionals board. So if you know of anybody who'd be interested, we have a meet and greet and information session coming up in early July.

Okay, thank you. Thank you. Amy Brown.

Good morning, everyone. I'm the Director of Victim Services in the Dane County District Attorney's Office. The big update for us is that the District Attorney's Office is moving to a temporary space in the Tommy Thompson building. Our floor is being remodeled. That's all happening this week. And so our phones have kind of been on and off today. They're on. So that's good. Our front desk remains on the third floor of the courthouse building for one more month. In about a month, that front desk office is going to move up to the fourth floor of the courthouse building. So our public facing services won't change at all in the courthouse. But the rest of us are going to be temporarily located over in the Tommy Thompson building. So that's all happening this week and taking up the majority of our time. We still have trials and court happening. So everyone's trying to do a little bit of both this week.

That's all I have. Thank you so much. Lieutenant Vosburgh.

Hello, everyone. Lieutenant Vosburgh, West District Supervisor. For sensitive crimes, nothing major to report this week. I guess the only thing I may have came in through our partner, Lieutenant Justine Harris, who is supervising the Special Victims Unit that focuses on our younger population um internet crimes against children physical abuse to children she said that she's been seeing a number of juvenile or younger person intimate partner violence cases of which our unit does get a few of those and so we were just reaching out to community Groups to determine whether or not any education is being done in the schools or not on this topic. So far, I've heard that there has not been. We do have a couple of detectives who have gone to some outlying high schools to talk about this as well as domestic violence. But I guess we would just be kind of looking to see whether or not anyone has talked about this or put this out to our student population. In the city, so if you have any information on that. Let me know, but that's all I've got.

Shannon and I both do Shannon. Why don't you go 1st?

Yeah, so we do have a prevention, outreach, education, and training team that does those kinds of presentations. They also do our primary prevention program in the area of middle schools and high schools. If you are interested, if anyone from the MPD is interested, you can reach out to Zoe Heitzinger, which is zoeh at abuseintervention.org, and she can go. We meet with about 3,000 students a year.

Um, so we are in every health class, um, essentially in middle and high school through most of Dane County, we reach about 26,000 kids a year where we talk about, um, healthy relationships, boundaries, um, consent. Uh, we talk about, um, bystander intervention. Um, we, we do quite a bit of programming in the schools. Um, Jennifer. Oh, and also you can reach out to us and we can give you more information. We have a full team. I don't remember how to spell my person's last name, so I'm going to not give you their email address, but I'll send it to you.

Jennifer. And I just wanted to add, so we are not, we don't do prevention education for that age, but I just wanted to throw out there that safe Harbor is a very appropriate referral for, you know, teenagers and a demand partner violence situations. We, you know, We have advocacy, crisis intervention, mental health support, suicide assessments, all the things that kids need. And we, you know, have advocates for the parents to help, you know, safety plan within the family. So that's a very appropriate referral for St. Carver as well.

Can I ask a follow-up question? Thank you. For the sake of, you know, we've had board turnover and we have a new supervisor, I'm just looking... for folks and agencies that have resources that are more in the prevention side of things. To what extent is Dane County supporting those specific services or those other grants or funding? I just wanna make sure everybody has an idea of kind of the impact at the county level from a budget standpoint.

Shannon, why don't you go first?

Because I'm sorry, our prevention program is entirely through fundraising dollars. There is there is really no we have a few small foundation grants that assist with that, but it's all through fundraising. The money that we get from the county is specifically for our health and tax line and our legal advocacy services. But with the current competitive RFPs that are out, however those funding formulas were determined, certainly were not based in The reality of what we've been doing for the last 40 years with the county. So even in the best case scenario, should we be awarded those contracts, days will be incurring a 61% loss in county funding for our health line, text line and legal advocacy services. Hence the focus on more private dollars going forward.

So we receive about $74,000 for prevention, and that is all we receive. Everything else is through. We do have some money through DOJ, but most of that is unsupported. um we have been able to put together a couple of multicultural outreach positions that do some prevention work but i assume um with the new rules that we will not be able to keep those positions funded when that grant ends jennifer

Yeah, so we do prevention work for the younger kids up elementary school, up to sixth grade. And that is not, no prevention work is funded by the county, nor VOCA, Victims of Crime Act. They do not fund prevention. The crime has to already have occurred. And so we use some money from the state to support our prevention efforts and everything else is fundraising.

Supervisor Truzios.

Hi, thank you. Just for my notes here, can the previous speaker who's speaking from the conference room get her name?

That's Erin, Supervisor. Oh, yeah. Sorry, I flipped a little on the screen.

I can't see very well. Thank you.

And Shannon wants to mention that they do have DOA prevention money through the state. Does that answer everybody's questions to have an idea of what it is that Dane County is a part of? Yes, Shannon.

Sorry, I apologize. I was wrong. We did get some ARPA money through the county for prevention for a while, but that's gone. Yeah.

And our contract ended in 25th.

Beth Freeman. Good morning. My name is Beth Freeman. I'm the manager with Dane County Adult Protective Services. And in terms of our operations and regular work that staff are doing, No updates, but I apologize if this is repeated, but just confirming our Domestic Violence and Later Life conference is on Thursday, November 12th. It'll be virtual. the topic is sexual abuse, sexual safety, and technology as it relates to older adults. Um, so we're partnering as we've talked about now that's coming back to me, partnering with the Bridge to Hope and UW Green Bay to develop that conference. So we're looking, looking forward to getting back to having, having that again this year after a break in 2025. Um, I'll also briefly share, we've been working on a proposal for a dementia stabilization unit to try and operationalize that in Dane County. And that proposal has been put forward to our Director of Human Services for consideration for the 2027 budget. We don't know if it will be included or not, but it's been put forward as a resource for for individuals at risk in our community due to behavioral expressions that become physically aggressive. And I think, knock on wood, those are the main things. Otherwise, folks are out there doing the work and trying to keep up with everything.

It's very heartening to hear about their proposal, Beth. Thank you.

Thank you.

Janelle?

There, I had to unmute. Morning, everyone. I actually have a pre-med student who's with me for the summer. It says Janiel, but it's actually Dylan. So I'd like to have him introduce himself first and talk about what we're doing together this summer, and then I'll give my own personal update. Thank you so much, Janiel.

Hi, good morning, everyone. Like Dr. Lukey said, my name is Dylan Castle. I'm a pre-med student working as a research intern with her this summer. We are focusing on the impacts of technology facilitated abuse and what we're calling spaceless violence on indigenous survivors. Investing in how digital tools operate across three specific areas like coercive control, barriers to safety, or resource for survivor healing. So, yeah.

That's amazing work. Thank you so much. Janielle?

Hi, everyone. Hope you're well. What I'm working on right now, I'm pretty excited about. I have a pilot project that I'm doing in collaboration with Lakota Ray Reservation, specifically with their child support department. So they've noticed that, I mean, it's not anything new, but there are a number of people who are eligible for child support services that don't access child support or other economic supports on the reservation. So they wanted me to do... pilot study to kind of get a better idea of the experiences that people have had navigating these programs, maybe why people have chosen to not access services, whether it was whether they were worried about their safety, or other concerns like that. So I'll be doing storytelling sessions with both men and women, which is new for me. My work has focused solely on gender-based violence against women so far. So this will be the first time I'm interviewing men. And I'm also interviewing a number of personnel, whether it's child support, the tribal courts, other allied services to find out their perspectives about, you know, Safely accessing child support and other economic supports and just trying to determine what we can do to making money. accessing child support and other economic supports more safe for participants. And I've been collaborating with this team through a federal saves grant for the last few years. So this is kind of part of the evaluation process for that grant as it comes to an end. So I'll be doing those interviews over the summer, and I will share back findings with this group.

That is very exciting. Thank you so much. Nella.

Good morning, everyone. Thank you for your updates. I don't have anything on my end for this meeting, but appreciate all yours.

Thank you so much, Nella. Vanessa.

Good morning, everyone. Sorry, I have my camera off. I'm really sick. We don't have anything really going on other than really needing to hire people. Meeting a bilingual service facilitator because we have a staff that is going to be departing. Also, looks like we need an ISD person who could be either Spanish speaking or not. We're also getting ready to celebrate our 10 years at Anissa's. So information will be sent out in the next few weeks or whatever about what we're planning for that. Thank you.

Exciting. Thank you so much, Vanessa. RCC is still looking for an in-school educator. We promoted our game changers person to development to help me, Shannon. Same deal. I'm doing the same as you are. And we are moving our in-school person to our game changers program. And so we are hiring an educator. So if you know someone that is passionate about children and passionate about education, please let us know. Our F&E program at RCC is going really well, and it's actually connecting with survivors that we didn't even think of. So we knew that we would connect with persons who may be fearing of systems, but what we didn't expect was to get incarcerated victims. And what we found out is that this is a place where our incarcerated survivors can come without having a whole group of people looking over what's going on, walking through public places in handcuffs, and it just provides them a more accommodating experience than the hospital. And that was a great bystander effect of us having this Uh, forensic nurse exam space is we have had a couple of incarcerated survivors come through and their, um, comments were about how they felt more humanized, um, than going to a hospital and having to go through all of the, uh, breaks. Um, otherwise, um, we are. embarking on a summer of a lot of activities. We plan on being at, I swear, almost every community event that is known to mankind. And July 4th, we will be with the Nightmares, celebrating with them. So feel free to come out and celebrate with RCC and the Nightmares who are having us be there with them to celebrate. I don't celebrate Independence Day, so I just say celebrate because there was no independence on July 4th for people like me. All right. Now we're going to go to CCR updates. Amy.

Scar. Sorry. Hi. Um, so, uh, we've just had a busy time through the elder abuse CCR, which was the world elder abuse awareness day, uh, week events. We were, um, had our ridiculously popular shred fest, uh, last Friday. Um, this year we were able to accommodate people who wanted to recycle small electronic devices. So that was a good addition. Uh, we were at the Hilldale farmer's market, uh, melting the entire day, but we were able to do some education. There's a large older adult population over on the near west side of town. So we were able to talk to quite a few folks with our friends from the Department of Financial Institutions. They partnered with us for that event. We also were recognized at the Dane County Board of Supervisors in May for World Elder Abuse Awareness Day. with Patrick Miles as our sponsor, which was great. So we're just, yep, World Elder Abuse Awareness Day was yesterday. So we're coming down off our high from that. I facilitate, for those of you who don't know me, I facilitate the Elder Abuse CCR, and we're going to change that meeting structure to quarterly as I start to transition a couple of newer staff into taking over the organizing and facilitating of that in the next year or two. I also facilitate the financial abuse specialist team for Dane County. And so we hold monthly meetings because there's a lot to talk about with regards to exploitation, fraud, scams and frauds, and financial crimes. Beth mentioned the Domestic Violence and Later Life Conference, which is a subcommittee of the Elder Abuse CCR. And last but not least, and this actually may just be a question for Amy, but we have a pilot program. project coming to Dane County from the American Bar Association and the DOJ, wanting to help people who work with financial crimes and exploitation of older adults to understand how to better do forensic interviewing. and forensic information keeping for those kinds of cases. So it's a new thing coming to us for two days in August. And I just didn't know maybe who to reach out to at the DA's office because it's for prosecutors.

Yeah. If you just want to reach out to me, you and I can coordinate on the side.

That'd be great. Oh, that's super easy. Thank you. I appreciate it. It is two full days at the end of August and, um, but it is an opportunity, uh, here to really better understand what the, what the numbers mean, how to gather them, how to, um, authenticate everything. It's, it's, we're very excited about it. So, um, I thought I had a thought in my head, but it's gone now. So that's my updates. Thank you so much. Yeah.

Good morning. I'm pretty sure you said Joe, but I'm just going to go. I'm Joe IDD victim advocate and investigator with Dane County adult protective services. I help facilitate, or I do facilitate the IDD CCR updates. I don't have any updates at this time. We meet on a quarterly basis. So we haven't had another one. since this last meeting, but our next CCR meeting is July 15th, and I'm still working on gathering a presenter and preparing for that. So if you have any ideas for presenters, shoot them my way. Thank you.

Thank you so much. Also, I'm sorry, Joe and I are going to be presenting at the Wisconsin Serving Victims of Crime Conference on the 18th. We're going to talk about our victim advocacy program for older adults and people with development IDD there as a breakout session. So that was what I was thinking of.

That is awesome. The DBSACCR just regrouped and had a community-wide meeting to bring new members into the meeting. That was very successful. We had about 20 people there who were very excited about getting together and talking about what it is that we can do in the community. We are focusing on community education, agency interaction, and survivor surveys so that survivors can always give input We were very excited to connect with a UW researcher who came because they did a lot of research on stealthing.

As you know, stealthing is not illegal in the state of Wisconsin.

And it just so happens I'm on the legislative, I'm a co-chair of the legislative committee for the Department of Justice AG SART team. So many words. And we're going to bring that up there to see if we can become one of the states that also recognizes this violation as a crime. Jennifer, I know that you're a part of the Child and Family CCR and Cheryl's not here, but I don't know if they've met since last month.

I have not been able to attend the last meeting or two. So to be honest, I don't know if they've met recently or not.

Okay, thank you so much. And now we have legislative updates. Supervisor Welch?

Just one quick one to share. I know the last, must have been last month's meeting, there was a training that was put forth about ethics. A slight update from that particular training Within that training, it was noted that for personal interest disclosures were added as a disclosure that needed to happen prior to meetings upon conversation with court counsel specific to essentially what victims of crime would potentially need to disclose on the board floor. I became pretty concerned with that language and exactly what that would mean for Board members to have to disclose things or be compelled to disclose things. So I put forth an operating amendment to have that removed. And at the last board meeting for personal was removed, you know, in fairness to the board, I think it was very well intended. It's just unforeseen consequences. piece of legislation. So that is not required any longer but financial disclosures are all still required. That's the only update I have for now.

Supervisor Chisios, thank you so much for joining us.

Do you have any updates? It's an honor to be here as an appointed member. No updates, just I figured I'd give myself a brief introduction. My name is Ari Atrusios. My pronouns are they, them. I'm the supervisor for District 9. My day job and background is as an engineer. I'm currently a power plant operator for the state. But I am an appointed member of, I'm on the Public Protection and Judiciary Committee. Um, and which is the reason I'm appointed here. Um, and I personally have, um, experience with, uh, DV intimate partner violence, I say that kind of stuff. Um, so I'm happy to be here. Um, well, I did go to the, uh, Wisconsin human trafficking summit, which occurred earlier in June. Um, I've met after actually one of the, uh, One of the small business owners who runs her own massage business approached me during that meeting, connected me with one of the detectives for the sheriff's department. And after having some conversations with them, I'm going to begin the process. And Aaron, I'm actually going to reach out to you about this later today or tomorrow when I get the chance. But hoping to find... out if there's options for the county to pursue some kind of licensure for massage parlor storefronts businesses to kind of empower our municipal partners as well as the chair's department to take more action that's proactive and not just going after the victims, but more going after the businesses behind them. But that's where my mind's at. That's kind of my background and happy to be here.

I am so excited that that is the work that you are embarking on. Thank you so much. Um, our next meeting date is July 21st. I will not be at that meeting and supervisor Welsh will be chairing that committee meeting. Um, we are off in August in September. Um, we are going to ask the, um, department of human services to come in and present a budget. Um, we will do, um, elections for chair and vice chair. If you are interested in being chair or vice chair, please send that information to Priscilla. Um, we are going to do those every two years when we have the change over of County board folks. Um, so give them an opportunity to get in and then we do the elections in September. Um, otherwise, um, if there are anything that we need to put on here for future meeting items and dates, um, please let us know. Oh, uh, the other thing that we are going to add to our agenda, um, is trends. If you are seeing any trends in your spaces, um, we want to hear about it in this committee. And we're going to add that to the agency updates so that we're not adding another whole thing, but it'll be agency updates and trends in sensitive crimes. We do not have any public comments on items not on the agenda. Do we have any other such business as allowed by law? Do I have a motion to adjourn?

Proceed as so moved.

Seconded by Supervisor Welsh. And we are, I'm assuming nobody's going to say no to be adjourned. We're going to make this unanimous consent. Thank you so much. See you next month.