When, in fact, there are empty beds . At first the county claimed the state forbid them from filling the beds. The state quickly denied this and followed a perplexing periods of excuses for not filling beds. We read there was trouble fills staff positions. Then the story shifted again. They were aware of staff negligence and error so they left beds empty rather than expose new admission to say that. What about existing residents. Identifying staff negligence and error at not correcting it is, in fact, negligence and error. They didnt provide services for people needing care. They deemed the staff incapable of doing so properly. This must not go on. People are waiting for services. Thank you. Commissioners, secretary, thank you all for having this hearing today. I see appreciate the time. Everyone in the audience, i appreciate you coming out. The system is broken. Thithis is a symptom. There are 30 beds to close on december 1st. Six beds on november 18th, 18 beds on the 17th of this mon
Provides. I ask you to consider the individuals you are affecting before making changes. That will have a negative impact on the more helpless clients. Displacing the Mental Health and taking their home are not the solution to the homeless issues. Lets address the facility issues and Work Together to solve them so we can all retain our beds and continue to serve the members of the community. Thank you so much. [applause. ] thank you. I am Theresa Palmer a long time san franciscan. Usually i talk about longterm care. This whole thing is extremely upsetting, and my hope is the department of Public Health can improve from the fallout of this fiasco. Keeping longterm care beds empty because of what amounts to dphs lack of will to fill them is unacceptable. I cant help having the paranoid thoughts the mayor wanted to gain political points by keeping beds empty to say she could offer navigation beds then in the coverup. I may be off on that but that is what it looks like. This disregard for
Reallocate beds for Navigation Center purposes leaves a psychiatric medical need unmet. There will be a percentage of patients that need this level of care. Rather than further reducing we need to provide a comprehensive system of Behavioral Healthcare. We needed this yesterday. We need it more today. Thank you for your consideration. Is there any more Public Comment . I just want to say the arf is anything but unsafe. The staff deserve consideration for their jobs. Thank you. I am a gay man that i hate. I will put this in the hands of the commission. Mr. Pickens will you come back up, before we get into the commissions questions and comments i would like to give doctor colfax an opportunity to respond to the things he has heard. We will come back to you during the course of the dialogue up here. Thank you. I want to thank everybody for coming out today and expressing your opinion. It is incredibly important. I apologize on the part of the department for not getting input earlier and h
I dont think they should close it down. That is my place of living. I have been there for five years along with my other clients there. I feel that the arf shouldnt be closed down. Thank you. Thank you, ms. Allen. Good afternoon. I am a Mental Health worker at the facility also known as arf. I want to thank you. Thank you so much. I dont have anything to say because supervisor ronen said everything i will agree with what he is saying. I is agree with her. I came to the arf to the Mental Health and living en independeny in the community. It is in the hopes of enabling them to get back into the community. Some clients are able to move to lesser care. Unfortunately, a majority of clients are in need of Constant Care and attention. The ones that need the most care received eviction on august 19. We have an established program serving the needs of San Francisco adult Mental Health population for the last 14 years. Instead of building on the program and increasing beds, the program has been
We could move forward to operate all 55 of the arf beds. In addition to these factors, the redevelopment of empty unused beds in the arf could be repurposed to provide additional beds for homeless clients in need of Behavioral Services by expanding the humming bird psychiatric respite program. I would like to talk about hummingbird and why its expansion is important. A background. Hummingbird first opened in 2017 with 15 beds, which as i said before were always full. Then it expanded by 14 beds in february over 2019. Those beds were the result of the beds we asked to go to suspension to use the beds for hummingbird h bird. To date it serves 500 clients. It is a primary discharge for those discharged from zucker bird San Francisco. 30 are from the psychiatric services. This is a safe place to be other than is on the streets where they are the opportunity to engage with staff and be offered services and hopefully willing to accept the services at some point. Next i will review the commun