Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Rep. Theresa Wood (Chair)]: Okay. Welcome back, folks. We've been having some technical difficulties, and thank you to the individuals who had emailed us and let us know that you could not hear the sound. Apparently, it's not affecting all of YouTube or Zoom land. It's only affecting our committee, so it appears to be a technical equipment issue. So we have alternate microphones, so we're going to give that a try and going to ask the witness to continue and again my apologies for the interruptions, Jenna. Okay great

[Jenna O’Farrell (Executive Director, Northeast Kingdom Community Action - NEKCA)]: so in conclusion He would welcome continued and future discussions to offer recommendations for a continuum of interventions that places people at the center of the system and accounts for regional differences in healthy markets, service availability, workforce capacity, and community resources. Effective solutions must be adaptable, locally informed, funded, and designed in partnership with providers and people with lived experience to achieve lasting outcomes.

[Rep. Theresa Wood (Chair)]: Thank you very much. I got a lot to say just about the purpose. That's good. I mean that's what we're here for. That's what this discussion is about hearing all the different perspectives about what's in this bill, what's not in the bill, and how we should be approaching this as a government body in our responsibility in terms of setting policy. So, thank you for some of the very specific things that you said, Jenna, and for those who are listening, I want to make sure that you know that Jenna's full statement, if you had a difficulty hearing it, is posted on our website so you're able to read it at your leisure. Now we're welcoming Paul Dragon for any comments that you'd like to make.

[Paul Dragon (Executive Director, Champlain Valley Office of Economic Opportunity - CVOEO)]: We did this together. This is on behalf of the whole Vermont Community Action Party.

[Rep. Theresa Wood (Chair)]: Okay great. So now we can open up for questions? Is that okay? That's great. Thank you so much. So, committee we just heard from community action agencies, all five of them essentially represented this and we will hear more from them as we work our way through this bill and talk about the different sections of the bill and look for some solutions. Opening up for questions from people. Yeah, go ahead, Bishop. Is this number one or two? I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding.

[Rep. Doug Bishop (Member)]: There was a reference at the beginning of slip and it's happened to all of us regarding H-ninety one, but I wanted to touch base related to H-ninety one. Were there aspects of that final bill? If you could think maybe many, but are there two or three things that stood out in that bill that you believe are absent in May, but The U. S. Essential to trying to move forward with some advanced advancing this issue this year in the legislature.

[Paul Dragon (Executive Director, Champlain Valley Office of Economic Opportunity - CVOEO)]: Well, of all, we really appreciate your work on this and also last year on the intense work. I think what we have that's helped inform us in this testimony is a community based approach. So when we see that language here, you'll note that we talked about it being adequately resourced. So I think that is similar to h 91 as well. I think in terms of the overall structure and responsibility and how we develop the system, the philosophy, I think a lot of that was within H91. We're not quite seeing that here. We'd love to continue to work with you on that.

[Rep. Theresa Wood (Chair)]: Thank you. One of the things that I picked up from sort of the overall comments, I think you might have used it once or twice, is participation needs to be supportive and can't be coercive in terms of individuals not only consent but participation in things like case management, things like, you know, all of the things that you talked about that you provide as community action agencies and some of our other partners also provide. Could you describe a little bit about what your experience and background is around what happens when you try to sort of force people to do things that they might not be ready to do.

[Jenna O’Farrell (Executive Director, Northeast Kingdom Community Action - NEKCA)]: I'm a true educator and I certainly have had experience in education and I, there's so many parallels I think on education and housing in many ways and I think in the education world there becomes a frustration with a student who's misbehaving in a classroom and a teacher may say, Oh, I'm doing this program with this student and I've been doing it for sixty days, and they're not any better. Well, it took eight years for that kid to get in front of that teacher to get that programming. They're not changing in sixty days. We are working with adults who have had patterned behavior and experiences and have struggles that have happened for years. And saying that in sixty days, this is all going be better. Like it takes time and relationship building and people change in the context of relationship, they do not change within the context of rules. Because if that was true, none of us probably ever would have got a speeding ticket, right? Because we all know the rule, but we get statements. And I think this is a very complicated layered approach that we have to think about because humans are messy. We're working with humans and they're not linear and they're messy and it's complicated. And I think when we think about regulations have the providers follow the regulations around like our accountability for our funding and reporting outcomes but we need the flexibility for our staff to have really lead with compassion.

[Rep. Theresa Wood (Chair)]: I hear you saying secure accountability on providers as opposed to like not opposed but as contrasting to strict rules around individuals.

[Paul Dragon (Executive Director, Champlain Valley Office of Economic Opportunity - CVOEO)]: Could I just say

[Jenna O’Farrell (Executive Director, Northeast Kingdom Community Action - NEKCA)]: Yeah, no, go ahead. I also

[Paul Dragon (Executive Director, Champlain Valley Office of Economic Opportunity - CVOEO)]: wouldn't want this committee or any Vermont here to think that we don't have guidelines, we don't have rules in our shelters. When people come in, they get a really fundamental assessment for coordinated entry, it can take up to forty five minutes. I was recently listening in one of our staff going over the welcome packet, the guest welcome packet with the rights and responsibilities, the rules of the house coming to community meetings, education programs, and our shelters across the state. I think we should all be super proud of our shelters because they're all doing this kind of work already. Just want you all to know that.

[Jenna O’Farrell (Executive Director, Northeast Kingdom Community Action - NEKCA)]: In our shelters, I always tell the staff and the guests, the first job is to keep it safe. And our participants, our guests, their job is to help keep it safe.

[Rep. Theresa Wood (Chair)]: Sure, thank you. We have Representative Garofano, Representative Nielsen and then Representative Steady.

[Rep. Golrang "Rey" Garofano (Vice Chair)]: Thank you so much for your testimony. So in my day job, I work in early ed and supporting providers. Often we say that it's the teachers that need the support to support the kids, right? So can you talk a little bit about the supportive staff? I know that's, you know, and I also have worked in housing and very familiar with supportive services and how important they are. Just kind

[Rep. Theresa Wood (Chair)]: of talk about the

[Rep. Golrang "Rey" Garofano (Vice Chair)]: relationship with the clients and also the training and that, you know, we heard this morning from the healthcare coordinators in Northeast Kingdom and how they help people fill out their forms and their applications and

[Rep. Theresa Wood (Chair)]: kind of

[Rep. Golrang "Rey" Garofano (Vice Chair)]: talk about how your agencies are maybe poised to and because they have training and what that training is to support the clients that

[Jenna O’Farrell (Executive Director, Northeast Kingdom Community Action - NEKCA)]: come through your doors. I would say that in the Northeast Kingdom that NEPA, where we don't have technical assistance funding to give people appropriate training, we lead with our values and we can train the harder skills, what we hire and really lean into, what the values of our community action agency are, and really putting our participants first. So we can offer training. And also, think in general, sometimes the hardest positions that we have in those direct care and support are typically like the lowest paid. And we don't have the freedom to, in our budgets, to be able to have somebody with a high school diploma and lived experience earning a certain amount, which we should, but we're really hiring people based on their experience as humans. And I don't know if you have a different population of employees, but

[Paul Dragon (Executive Director, Champlain Valley Office of Economic Opportunity - CVOEO)]: Yeah, I agree. And again, we want folks to know that it's remarkable when a person comes into not just one of CBOEO shelters, I've been to other shelters in the state, that they're getting a near deep assessment on their needs. We start them on a housing plan. It's a three step plan right away. That's their first engagement, what are your goals? And then we use the techniques of motivational interviewing and everything else. We have training for our staff and we do a lot of it online and we do some of it through the remarkable action partnership and the state supports some of our training. We have a poverty and opportunity forum coming up that will we all get together and it's a really good training there. I think we do want you to know that our shelters across the state are doing a lot for the little and they're doing amazing, amazing work right now. It's the capacity that is the challenge. Will be learning the need in the capacity.

[Rep. Theresa Wood (Chair)]: Thank you. Representative Nielsen, Representative Steady.

[Rep. Todd Nielsen (Member)]: Thank you for what you're saying. A couple years ago I did security at a woman shelter in Mount Burlington. I did it from the beginning to the end. I was there almost every weekend day and with a low barrier, it's not bad at the staff. At the end, were very negative with the fact that they're freaking shell shocked. It's really brutal. When I had a problem, I didn't deal with it. I gave to the staff. I felt really bad for them. My job was to screen people for weapons. Yeah. Okay. My kid, getting knives, guns, whatever it gives me. I'll get back in the lead, which we did. Yep. And it's truly not bad for the employees. Like at the end of all chair, but month after month it just these are good people. It's it's not fair to staff. That's what I understand.

[Rep. Theresa Wood (Chair)]: Is there a question in there, Representative Nielsen? Asking about what staff experience in being in working in shelters?

[Paul Dragon (Executive Director, Champlain Valley Office of Economic Opportunity - CVOEO)]: Yeah, exactly. Thank you for sharing that. I'm not sure what shelter it is. It's not there anymore. I'll do

[Rep. Todd Nielsen (Member)]: the women's shop at the BFW. Oh I see

[Paul Dragon (Executive Director, Champlain Valley Office of Economic Opportunity - CVOEO)]: okay thank you. Thank you for sharing that. To Jenna's point, health and safety is the absolute key. So we run low barrier shelters, we also have family shelters, we have domestic violence shelters, and we're going to have our recovery shelter. And this kind of panoply of shelters is happening all over the state with our low barrier shelters and the Champlain Place, I'm just going to give you an example, there's more throughout the state, it is the only 20 fourseven shelter in Chittenden and Frankfort County. People can stay during the day, it's very low barrier and our staff take a tremendous amount of time working with people on benefits navigation, case management, housing plans, trying to get medical services on-site, health and substance use services. They do the best they can do. And sometimes there are issues and we have strict rules around threats, violence, and sometimes we will exit people for violence and deep threats and we then work on a reparative process to try to get them back in depending on what the issue was. We're about to open up the emergency cold weather shelter at the Miller Center for ten nights in a row. It's like it's like no barrier, right? And people will come there, we're gonna have security, we're gonna screen for weapons as they come in, we take the weapons, we store them and we've got like our staff worked on Christmas Day and opened the shelter, they worked on New Year's Day and this happened around the state. So health and safety is the most important thing. There's always something, there's always a few people, the vast majority of people we see are like really welcome and supporting each other and I'm not sure we'll ever get away from some of those instances. I just want you to know that for all of us health and safety is key for the guests or our staff.

[Rep. Theresa Wood (Chair)]: Thank you. Representative Steady and then Representative Noyes had a question.

[Jenna O’Farrell (Executive Director, Northeast Kingdom Community Action - NEKCA)]: Do you work with other nonprofits that provide the same services like cod, pop up shelters and homeless transfer ma and other?

[Paul Dragon (Executive Director, Champlain Valley Office of Economic Opportunity - CVOEO)]: Yeah, I mean, I could just give a and I know Jen is going to have examples too. You mentioned COTS. So COTS does higher barrier shelters. CDOE does lower barrier and then we have the recovery shelter, employment shelter. We are open all day our shelters are open all day. So we all fit and we all connect and we all work I think really closely together and our continuum of care both in Chittenden and Franklin Grand Isle County in Addison super strong they connect we integrate we work then we bring other services on so you might see the federally qualified health center community health center come to our Chantilly place you might see you're going to see a holler clinician involved case manager at our new recovery shelter opening up. So we do a lot of integration.

[Rep. Brenda Steady (Member)]: Good.

[Rep. Todd Nielsen (Member)]: That's nice.

[Rep. Daniel Noyes (Clerk)]: Just was wondering if you could talk about access to case management and how we can strengthen that in the work that you're doing because whether it's engagement or what we can do in this legislation to help you increase access to case management and really building those relationships with people who are unhoused. Because I just see that as a really good way to help people.

[Jenna O’Farrell (Executive Director, Northeast Kingdom Community Action - NEKCA)]: Do you have to get fixed up?

[Paul Dragon (Executive Director, Champlain Valley Office of Economic Opportunity - CVOEO)]: We have permit support Yeah, I will say just on case management quickly, we have the Samaritan House shelter, it doesn't have 20 fourseven coverage. So there are times when we don't have a case manager on-site. Our two domestic violence shelters, are times when there's not a case manager on-site. We are limited in capacity at one of the larger shelters at the state at Champlain Place because we don't have adequate funding for case management. To Jenna's point, people are not paid that well. And it's really tough work. So yes, I really appreciate that question.

[Jenna O’Farrell (Executive Director, Northeast Kingdom Community Action - NEKCA)]: We can certainly have the need for more case management. Through the opioid settlement funds at MECO, we have two, four, it's supposed to be four but now it's only two and it's a long story, to have case managers working with the recovery centers. So like embedded in their two recovery centers but their NACA employees have worked with people experiencing homelessness with substance use disorder. But that's a creative funding mechanism, right? That and it's on time funding. So we don't have

[Rep. Theresa Wood (Chair)]: the funding. Okay, we got Representative McGill, Representative Maguire, Bishop.

[Rep. Jubilee McGill (Member)]: Just kind of building up that conversation. I know in this industry, that's the right term, line of work, there's been a lot of turnover, and that's because it is really hard work. It's not particularly high salaries, and you're just dealing with secondary trauma every day. Has that intense amount of turnover kind of leveled off? Stayed the same? How's hiring going? I'd like to hear about that kind of aspect of your work.

[Paul Dragon (Executive Director, Champlain Valley Office of Economic Opportunity - CVOEO)]: So thank you for that question. Workforce is always a challenge. Hiring people often getting fully staffed is difficult. And I think the effect of what we're seeing does can take a toll on people and it is why we call for more integrated service systems that really does need to be supported by the state to be more effective at the local level because I know this is going to be the same for most shelters in the state, we are seeing people with severe mental health issues, co occurring substance use disorders, and chronic medical conditions. And our staff are not really I'm not trained to do that. And we do get some support from other agencies as best we can but we need a real integrated system of care to know to work with people with psychiatric disorders. Some of them are staying way longer than other people at our shelters and not getting the care that they need.

[Rep. Theresa Wood (Chair)]: Great, I think representative of virus.

[Rep. Eric Maguire (Member)]: Want to first start by saying and appreciate my gratitude for the work you folks do as you know, I'm now and going on, well, always been involved

[Paul Dragon (Executive Director, Champlain Valley Office of Economic Opportunity - CVOEO)]: in some I of local

[Rep. Eric Maguire (Member)]: need to be clear on something. The main intent, like we've just shared the unbelievable services and opportunity and support that the shelters and other providers are providing to those that are experiencing homelessness. The intent really on this is to provide the necessary staffing and structure to expand the organizations, to get it stabilized, and to be able to draw down on utilizing hotel rooms. So the individuals that are in the hotel rooms are now getting access to these phenomenal services that we are applying. That's the main intent. We both agree that hotels shouldn't be utilized as a permanent utilization. The idea is to expand our continuum of care to draw up and put other levels of access. When I use the word like continuum of care or tier system, I'm looking at it from a program ready perspective. I met numerous individuals. We heard a testimony from Chris, and I do have a question, please.

[Rep. Theresa Wood (Chair)]: I'm getting to it, it's okay.

[Rep. Eric Maguire (Member)]: Hearing from the transportation commissioner in regards to they engage individuals that are staying in rest stops. And it's even, well, it's evident of working full time. It's evident, we know it's an affordability issue. We know it's a lack of affordable housing. We know that. So to provide them like a level of access to a service that they're program ready and then we'll make in the next step. That's what I mean by continuum of care. It's program ready. It's given individuals access, meeting them where they're at, looking at their situation and identifying how they can respond. The responsivity that now there's many people that are engaged right now that are dealing with high level acute mental health that you're experiencing in shelters and so forth. But to be able to give them access to another level of service that has that scope of practice to meet their needs, to reduce their risk in a way that they can respond, expands capacity and gets people out of the hotel rooms and gets them into these services and support them. I never have any intent to put in that case management. I've been a case manager at all different levels. No, you participate to your capacity. It's not violent, there are levels and you express it yourself. There is an expectation when people enter into these things that you want them to engage with services, engage with their plan. And over time, it's a pathway and a progress out of homelessness and still a continued path to what we have right now is all access goes into the shelters. And then to just an eligibility element. The eligibility within this bill is mainly towards GA housing, the utilization of that. There was no eligibility and access to any of the shelters or any of those programs. That's based upon categorization of homelessness. Therefore, my argument back with continuum of care approaches, you mentioned on in there, my argument with that as well, wait a minute, we have different levels of categories.

[Rep. Theresa Wood (Chair)]: I thought you said that at the beginning. That's why I'm just double checking.

[Jenna O’Farrell (Executive Director, Northeast Kingdom Community Action - NEKCA)]: But I just wanted to comment. Yeah, absolutely. I think what I learned last year, it was a learning experience for all of us. And I think it was around how intentional and clear language needs to be because our understanding of age 91 was very different from somebody else's understanding. And yesterday I watched the tape and you used the words discretion and discernment.

[Rep. Eric Maguire (Member)]: Yes. What else did I use though?

[Rep. Daniel Noyes (Clerk)]: Highly Highly amendable. So

[Jenna O’Farrell (Executive Director, Northeast Kingdom Community Action - NEKCA)]: discretion and discernment scares me when language isn't clear. So, think when we come back and we talk about what are aspects we can build on, language needs to be clear because when you were explaining that, it was very different from how I was reading and experiencing it in my office. So having that synergy around understanding, I think is really important for you all and then us in the field.

[Rep. Eric Maguire (Member)]: Just quickly, I use these two words, the hard and easy. It's a feature thing I throw to people that I worked with all upon. And I believe in this philosophy of the hard and easy. And I use hard and easy as acronyms. The hard standing for, the H standing for honesty and humility, the A standing for accountability, the R standing for responsibility and the D standing for discretion and discernment. And discernment can be summed up and defined in three words, understanding the truth. And I believe it's validly important that people practice that. Practice, you can't perfect it. Or you can practice the easy, excuses, assumptions, self serving. And then when providers like ourselves or people that really wanna be involved with something, the person that you worry kind of yonders or the system yonders away. And I believe you can only practice that. And think about that for a minute. You practice the heart each day, that's emotionally, physically, mentally, can be draining, but you're doing the best you can to practice it. If you practice in the easy, well, that's one heck of an easy day, cause we just brought it on through. And that's what I wanna see us all do. We gotta practice the hardness, and we gotta recognize there are tough decisions that are gonna be made, And, but this is what it is. And I look forward to working with everybody as we do find a pathway out of this. And I believe that this is a good framework that's highly amendable and is a good starting point.

[Rep. Theresa Wood (Chair)]: Thank you, Maguire. Representative Bishop was next.

[Rep. Doug Bishop (Member)]: We had some discussion and you talked about case management and some of the challenges, challenges and resources and the difficulty of the test. I think before coming to the legislature, and I think this would be true for a lot of Vermonters is it's not always clear what state government performs itself and how much we ask community partners to perform on behalf of the

[Paul Dragon (Executive Director, Champlain Valley Office of Economic Opportunity - CVOEO)]: state. Where

[Rep. Doug Bishop (Member)]: is there crossover or where might there be an absence of crossover or connection that you

[Rep. Eric Maguire (Member)]: would like to see it with respect

[Rep. Doug Bishop (Member)]: to the work the state is doing on case management versus what's being asked of you as community actionals?

[Jenna O’Farrell (Executive Director, Northeast Kingdom Community Action - NEKCA)]: I don't know if this is our answer, but I think when we when I think about that, I think about case management in the field in our communities as a relational relationship, and you grow and learn in that, and somebody's walking besides you and mentoring and coaching. When I think of the participants that are getting case management at the state level, they're receiving the benefit and it's a transactional relationship and it looks really different. You know, also your ability to access that benefit and to do different things takes a different skill set than sometimes folks that we're providing case management to. And also, I know we love the word case management, but in the field we don't like it, it's all just I have to say it. I've never said it so many times because nobody wants to be a case manager right so we talk about the coaching and mentoring and navigating advocates, let me just kind of human centered language around that piece of work. I don't know if you have anything. Yeah,

[Paul Dragon (Executive Director, Champlain Valley Office of Economic Opportunity - CVOEO)]: agree. And I think, well, we have, like, state staff doing great work, including casework, like in reach ups and everything. So I don't it's not them. It's the way the system is set up. And I agree with Jenna, it's, it's really transactional. They're kind people, and they'll do what they can. It's the system that underlies that, that makes the work very different. Do our field as community action agencies with integrated care and also what I think the shelter providers do around the state.

[Rep. Theresa Wood (Chair)]: I think that's probably a good place for us to wrap up for this morning. Thank you for the time and effort that you put in here, just every day living it out there, and then taking the time to be here with us today and to, as Representative Maguire said, to help us do this hard work of trying to define what the monitors should expect in state policy. One of the things that I noted during your testimony was the existence of current rules around certain things and current guidelines. And I'll be honest that I'm just speaking for myself, it leads to a little bit too much to chance to not have something in statute about what Vermont you should expect. And we see what happens when that is the case. And so, there might be current, I know there are current shelter guidelines for instance, they change, they should be informed by field, they should be informed by best practices and all of those kinds of things. I think that while there might be some existing things out there, think that you'll see us want to move in a direction where we're being clear, like you were just talking about, Jenna, being clear about what Vermonters as a whole should expect and particularly those people working in the field and living it themselves day to day. I that you have done a good job conveying what it's like right now. And we want to support you folks and all the other folks out there providing the services that are desperately needed. And we heard this morning about folks from the Northeast Kingdom in particular, Jenna, and the impact that hunger is having on people. So, know, we're talking about basic necessities of, you know, food and shelter. And those are things we have to keep in mind and we will do our very, very best to always make sure that the individual is at the center of the decisions that we make and that we refer to our guiding principles up there that also talk about people and the people who are supporting those individuals. Thank you both for being here and for all of the disturbances during the testimony and your flexibility and we look forward to further work with you.

[Paul Dragon (Executive Director, Champlain Valley Office of Economic Opportunity - CVOEO)]: Thank you so much. Thank you.

[Jenna O’Farrell (Executive Director, Northeast Kingdom Community Action - NEKCA)]: Thank you all. Thank you.

[Rep. Theresa Wood (Chair)]: Okay committee members, we're ending just a tiny bit early because some of us are the DD Council is having a luncheon at the Capitol Plaza. If you're attending that you'll have a couple minutes to get over there. We are going to be picking up back here precisely at one, so I really ask people to be in their seats at 01:00 because we have to finish up on the amendment and then we have other witnesses and we're starting work on the health department budget. Okay? So, be back precisely at one. Thank you.